Maddow said that "The Miami Herald deserves congratulations for its fairly epic new reporting on Trump's Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, and specifically on the deal that he struck when he was a U.S. Attorney with a very rich, very well connected, very prolific serial sex offender."
"Despite local police uncovering allegations of straight-up child rape and the FBI identifying dozens of victims, Alex Acosta struck a 'no prosecution agreement' in the Jeffrey Epstein case in Florida," Maddow noted. "He struck a deal with Epstein that made Epstein immune from prosecution for federal crimes."
Law professor Marci Hamilton, the CEO and Academic Director at CHILD USA, joined Maddow to discuss the scandal.
"The arrogance of both Epstein and Acosta in this situation is overwhelming," Hamilton noted. "These women were sexually abused -- as children -- one after the other, dozens of them. Acosta knew there were dozens of them."
"And what the FBI knew for certain is if there were dozens, there were probably hundreds," she noted. "And so the fact that they were able to then ignore that and go forward with some kind of deal among businessmen -- that we're going to protect all these powerful men -- is exactly what's wrong with our society."
"This is why children get abused," she added.
"Part of the deal that Acosta made offered immunity from federal prosecution in conjunction with these crimes to Epstein and also to any of his potential co-conspirators," Maddow noted.
President Donald Trump is a potential co-conspirator.
"They all knew the score, they knew he was doing it. They knew he was doing it in many locations and they knew there were other men involved -- there was no question about that," Hamilton noted. "And they still quashed it. Why? because it's about powerful men in powerful positions."
"It is literally no different from the Catholic Church scandal, it's just not clergy," she added.
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