(Bloomberg) -- Attorney General William Barr is reviewing whether he needs to recuse himself from the prosecution of fund manager Jeffrey Epstein on U.S. charges he sexually abused dozens of young girls for years at one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan, according to a Justice Department official.
Barr already has recused himself from matters related to Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, a fellow Cabinet member, according to the official, who asked not to be identified discussing a sensitive matter. Acosta was the top federal prosecutor in southern Florida in 2008 when Epstein was allowed to avoid prosecution on federal sex-trafficking offenses and the decades of prison time that he could have faced if convicted.
Under the deal, which has been widely criticized, Epstein was permitted to plead guilty to two state charges of soliciting a prostitute and served 13 months in a Florida state prison.
Prosecutors in the new case brought in Manhattan say they aren’t bound by Epstein’s earlier non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida because those charges didn’t include any alleged victims outside that state.
“This is old stuff, this is ancient stuff,” Reid Weingarten, one of Epstein’s lawyers, said in court Monday, referring to the new charges. He said Epstein believed he had a “global resolution” with his deal in Florida.
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