A former federal prosecutor told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the child sex crime prosecution of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein appeared to be "intentionally corrupted" -- and she said a new investigation is needed.
Mimi Rocah, a former U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, called for a Justice Department investigation into a secret plea agreement that landed Epstein in jail for just 13 months -- and kept many details of the allegations against him from going public.
"I can see just in public reports that the handling of this case differed greatly from my experience in 16 years, where I did lots of sex crimes (and) sex trafficking prosecutions, how this case differed greatly and the way it was handled -- huge red flags that something here was not right," Rocah said. "This was not handled in the way that sex trafficking cases would normally be handled, where defendants who have frankly much less bad conduct go to jail for 10, 15 years because those are very strict mandatory minimums written into our laws."
Rocah said the well-connected Epstein -- who was friends with both President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton -- should have spent the rest of his life in prison for sexually abusing and raping dozens of girls.
"Jeffrey Epstein got a slap on the wrist," she said. "Something went wrong here in the system. You know, it seems like it was intentionally corrupted to protect certain people, but we need an official investigation. The Department of Justice, office of the inspector general is probably the right mechanism to do that."
She said federal prosecutors in Florida -- including Trump's now-Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta -- crafted an unusual plea deal that should perhaps be thrown out.
"If there's misconduct that was found," Rocah added, "that would then enable or help the victims in being able to, first of all, seek further civil justice, and possibly allow, you know, a new prosecution because the agreement that was reached with Epstein could perhaps be thrown out."
