This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 22 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

It was the appointment of a new labor secretary, of all things, that got it going. In 2017, during Donald Trump’s first administration, the president picked a low-profile former U.S. attorney from Florida to head the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Alex Acosta wasn’t the flashiest of Cabinet nominees, and labor secretary certainly wasn’t the flashiest of Cabinet positions, but for one investigative reporter in Florida, the name rang a bell. 

When that reporter saw Acosta’s name in the papers, she remembered that back when he was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2008, his office had arranged a plea deal for a big finance guy. 

At the time, that finance guy wasn’t exactly a household name, either. But there were allegations that he had done some really, really bad stuff. So some people found it surprising when the U.S. attorney, for some reason, seemed to let him off the hook with just a brief stint in county jail.

It raised a few eyebrows in Florida when it happened, but no one had looked at it for a decade.

That was, until one reporter in Florida decided to give it a closer look. And after more than a year of work, that reporter published a piece in the Miami Herald titled “How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime.”

That piece was the first of a three-part series from investigative reporter Julie Brown, published in November 2018. The report not only made Acosta a household name, it also introduced the wider American public to that big finance guy who received the plea deal: Jeffrey Epstein.

For her story, Brown identified more than 80 of Epstein’s alleged victims, dozens more than anyone had known about before. It was Brown who revealed for the first time the full scope and nature of the financier’s alleged crimes. 

Which, of course, then put fresh scrutiny on Acosta, who had been the one to let Epstein off the hook all those years ago with that inexplicable sweetheart deal in Florida. 

Her reporting was damning, it was bulletproof, and it finally made it impossible to ignore what had happened to all those victims.

Brown published her revelations about Epstein in November 2018. Just three months later, a judge ruled Acosta had broken the law by not notifying the victims when he had given that plea deal. 

On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested on federal child sex-trafficking charges. Days later, Acosta had to resign as Trump’s labor secretary. ‘

Seven years later, we are still feeling the shock waves of Brown’s reporting. 

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This past Friday was the deadline for the Justice Department to unseal its files related to Epstein. It was required by law, thanks to a bill passed by Congress and signed by the president, to release all of the records in its possession and to redact only personal information that could invade a victim’s privacy. 

But when that deadline came around, the Justice Department failed to release all of the Epstein files as they were legally compelled to do. Instead, they released a small portion of them — heavily redacted. 

The Justice Department also inexplicably removed some of the documents after they posted them, including a photo that showed Trump. (After public backlash, they put that photo back up.)

In her recent reporting for the Miami Herald, Brown says that Epstein’s victims are upset by the heavy redactions and the small amount of material that has been released. 

More than a dozen victims have now written to Congress to request hearings to make sure the Justice Department follows the law with the disclosure of the Epstein files. 

Although details of the extent of Epstein’s crimes are beginning to trickle out, Brown’s reporting is far from complete.

On Monday, she posted to social media, writing that in recent weeks she had “received a lot of new information about girls and young women who were in fact sexually trafficked to powerful men,” adding, “This is not a hoax.”

Allison Detzel contributed.