The pattern of decisions from the DOJ suggests this was not institutional failure, but institutional protection. There’s nothing stopping the states of N.Y. or New Mexico from prosecuting any one of the “4 co-conspirators” let off in the Acosta deal.

**AI is my friend***

New York Attorney General Letitia James

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez

In 2008, federal prosecutor Alex Acosta cut a secret deal with Jeffrey Epstein that gave immunity from federal prosecution to Epstein, four named accomplices — Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, Lesley Groff, and Adriana Ross — and any other potential co-conspirators. That deal has shielded those four women for nearly twenty years. But here’s the thing: it was a federal deal, made by one U.S. Attorney’s office in Florida. Under a legal principle called dual sovereignty, a federal prosecutor has no power to speak for a state. New York and New Mexico are completely separate sovereigns with their own laws, their own courts, and their own authority to prosecute crimes that happened on their soil. Acosta couldn’t give away what wasn’t his to give.

That’s why both states still have a viable path to prosecution. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion was a documented crime scene, and the four women managed operations from New York. New Mexico’s Zorro Ranch was another site where abuse occurred. Both states have their own sex trafficking and criminal facilitation laws that apply independently of anything the federal government agreed to in Florida. The only reason these four have never faced charges isn’t because the law protects them — it’s because no state prosecutor has chosen to act. The Acosta deal closed a federal door but the states where many of these crimes happened are still open.