The president loves firing people. Good. He ought to now fire Secretary Alex Acosta from the Department of Labor.
As the Miami Herald revealed, Acosta brokered a plea deal with serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, which effectively ended the FBI’s investigation into the other victims and villains in Epstein’s pedophilic scheme. Instead of serving life in prison for repeatedly abusing children, Acosta got Epstein to plead guilty to prostitution charges.
The “prostitute” in question was a 14-year-old girl.
The Herald reports that Epstein’s close ties to the financial elite in 2008 made him a useful witness for federal prosecutors keen to investigate executives at Bear Stearns for corporate securities fraud. It’s possible that Acosta made a moral judgment albeit a flawed one, but one that saw a gain for justice in bargaining. But when asked about his handling of the Epstein case during his confirmation hearing, Acosta said, “At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register [as a sex offender] generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing.”
The argument defies logic. Acosta had access to dozens of material witnesses, plenty of whom corroborated each other’s stories independently. He could have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Epstein not only committed multiple rapes, but also that he developed an entire trafficking scheme designed to do so. Nailing Epstein on federal charges would have been, if anything, comparatively easy relative to other sex crime cases, which often have few victims and no material evidence.
Instead Acosta defended the powerful.
As head of the Department of Labor, Acosta is responsible for overseeing child labor and human trafficking. Given his record, he cannot be trusted by the American people to fairly and impartially perform his duties.
When it comes to Acosta, it shouldn’t be hard for Trump to unleash his favorite slogan: “You’re fired.”
