In recent days, financier Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal charges of child sex trafficking. He’d already been in court over the behavior in the late 2000s, but then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta helped him stay a mostly free man with a super lenient plea deal. Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is demanding that Acosta resign from his present position as Labor Secretary in the Trump administration. During a raid of Epstein’s New York home connected to his new arrest, authorities found images of sexual exploitation of minors, and a main reason he was still able to engage in this behavior as a free man is Labor Secretary Acosta.
Pelosi responded:
‘.
@SecretaryAcosta must step down. As US Attorney, he engaged in an unconscionable agreement w/ Jeffrey Epstein kept secret from courageous, young victims preventing them from seeking justice. This was known by@POTUS when he appointed him to the cabinet.#AcostaResign’
Trump has been faced with this kind of criticism before, but he has never taken a tough stance in response, just dismissing it with a “we’ll look into it.” Trump himself was at least previously a friend of Epstein’s, telling New York Magazine in the early 2000s while he was carrying out his trafficking that he thought Epstein was a great guy and knew he liked younger women. In hindsight, Trump knowing this — and freely sharing it — is unsettlingly questionable at best.
Acosta didn’t just miss some of the facts in the case — when U.S. Attorney in Florida, he actively broke the law in getting Epstein off the hook. He was just recently declared to have violated the Crime Victim Rights’ Act because he kept Epstein’s at the time known victims in the dark about the plea deal, which included barely a year in jail and the opportunity to spend most of each day outside the actual facility. At the time, Acosta got Epstein to plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution, and that was it, despite the fact that those charges don’t even cover what actually happened. Epstein himself personally manipulated young girls into being sexually exploited by him — and, some say, by some of his close associates, who include some very powerful people besides Trump.
Check out Twitter’s response to Pelosi weighing in…
Featured Image via screenshot
