White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is defending Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta as questions mount over his 2007 plea deal with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Acosta orchestrated a plea deal with Epstein that many saw as letting the convicted pedophile off easy. At the time, Epstein was accused of paying dozens of underage girls to perform sexual acts with him in his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.
Acosta, the lead prosecutor in the case, cut a deal with Epstein that resulted in the billionaire becoming a registered sex offender and spending 13 months in county jail. During his stint, Epstein was allowed to leave the jail during the day and work in his office nearby.
“[President Trump] met Alex Acosta when Alex applied and got the job, where he’s doing a great job. You look at the economy,” Conway told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “It’s classic [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] and her Democratic Party to not focus on the perpetrator at hand and instead to focus on a member of the Trump administration.”
“They’re so obsessed with this president that they immediately go to Alex Acosta,” Conway said.
Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats have called on Acosta to resign or be fired. The national spotlight turned on the Acosta plea deal after the FBI and New York police arrested Epstein on Saturday on charges similar to those he faced in Florida more than a decade ago.
Several Republican members of Congress have called for an investigation into Acosta’s handling of the 2007 plea deal. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who voted to confirm Acosta as Labor secretary, said Epstein’s sentence was absurd relative to the crimes he was accused of.
“This guy victimized dozens, probably scores, of little girls, and the sentence he got was pathetic. And, every mom and dad in America, frankly not just moms and dads but anybody with a heart, should be heartbroken by what happened here to those girls, to those victims, but also with the absurdity of a sentence that short,” Sasse said on Monday.
