US Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta is facing renewed calls for his resignation over the lenient 2008 plea deal he cut with Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire financier who on Monday was charged with operating a sex trafficking ring involving girls as young as 14.
Acosta is coming under a blizzard of calls from senior Democrats to step down or face fresh congressional scrutiny over the unusual deal he struck with Epstein while serving as Miami’s top federal prosecutor 11 years ago.
Epstein, 66, pleaded not guilty on Monday in a New York City court to one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and a second of sex trafficking underage females.
The unsealed indictment accused Epstein of operating a “network enabling him to sexually exploit and abuse dozens of underage girls.”
Epstein was alleged to have employed previous victims to recruit new targets of his crimes.
US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of the lawmakers leading the push for Acosta to quit.
In an interview with the Guardian she renewed her call for his resignation, accusing him of having allowed Epstein to evade all accountability for his sex crimes.
Wasserman Schultz, who earlier this year joined fellow Democratic lawmakers in pressing for an official government investigation into Acosta’s role in the handling of the Epstein case, pointed out that, as labor secretary, Acosta is responsible for child labor laws and human trafficking.
“A big part of his job is protecting workers and children from exploitation, yet he has demonstrated that he has utter disregard for victims and instead his priority is to protect sexual predators,” she said.
She said that if Acosta survived the current storm, pressure was already building within the congressional oversight committee on which she sits to call the labor secretary for questioning.
“There is strong interest among my colleagues to pursue this, it is absolutely time for us to take the next steps on holding Acosta accountable,” she said.
“Acosta must go. He handed a sweetheart deal to a serial sexual predator,” US Senator Tim Kaine said bluntly on Twitter.
Kaine grilled the then-federal prosecutor during his US Senate confirmation hearing in March 2017. After Acosta was confirmed by 52 Republicans and eight Democrats, Kaine said one of the main reasons he voted against the confirmation was the nominee’s record on the Epstein case.
As the federal prosecutor leading the case in 2008, Acosta oversaw a plea deal in which Epstein was granted a highly unusual non-prosecution agreement that shielded him from all federal criminal charges relating to his more than 30 incidents of potential abuse of underage girls.
Under the deal, the FBI probe that had already culminated in a 53-page draft indictment was shut down in favor of Epstein pleading guilty to two lesser state charges that controversially labeled his victims as prostitutes.
Immunity was also granted to Epstein’s “potential coconspirators,” though it did not identify individuals.
Epstein ended up serving just 13 months in jail with the ability to leave the prison every day to attend his luxury business premises.
How Acosta, 50, emerges from the furor is likely to depend heavily on the view taken by US President Donald Trump and his inner circle of aides.
A former White House adviser told Politico that “the next 72 hours are critical.”
In February, Trump lauded Acosta as a “fantastic labor secretary,” but so far the president has been ominously silent since Epstein was arrested on Saturday.
Trump’s position is complicated by the fact that he is reportedly among a number of Epstein’s rich and powerful friends.
The renewed focus on Epstein, and in turn on the labor secretary, was triggered in part by an in-depth investigation by the Miami Herald in November last year.
The newspaper identified 80 women sexually abused or molested by the billionaire over the five years to 2006.
Most of Epstein’s survivors are now in their late 20s and 30s. One of the most contentious aspects of the bargain struck by Acosta was that it was conducted in secret — none of the women were informed of the deal and allowed to express their opinion about it.
Under federal law, such plea deals have to be presented to victims in advance to ensure that they have input.
In a withering ruling in February, Federal Judge Kenneth Marra found that federal prosecutors led by Acosta had broken the law by hiding the agreement.
Marra concluded that a federal prosecution should have been conducted.
“Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others,” Marra wrote.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS