Crime

Alex Acosta Just Delivered A Dumpster Fire Of A Press Conference

What in the world was that?!?

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Labor Secretary Alex Acosta showed up at his press conference today adamant that he wasn’t holding this debacle of an event to send any signals to the White House. He then proceeded to offer us an hour of him trying to send signals to the White House in a desperate bid to hold onto his own job amid heightened scrutiny of that time that he let Jeffrey Epstein get a sweetheart deal before sealing all the records and cutting Epstein’s victims out of the whole process.

If this was his pitch, expect to see him gone within the week.

A lot can happen of course. Acosta might be able to convince his boss that he needs to stay to “own the libs” or something, but based solely on that press conference Acosta tried and miserably failed to connect with Trump.

Trump, who destroyed Jeb Bush’s air of inevitability by branding him “low energy” couldn’t have appreciated Acosta’s measured, meandering effort to heap responsibility for Epstein’s ludicrous plea deal on everyone but himself. He did, however, take off his “smart person” glasses right off the bat in a clumsy attempt to look like he was “getting tough,” so there was that. What Trump wanted to see was Brett Kavanaugh throwing a sneering temper tantrum and what he got was a series of weasely “well, actually…” statements thrown together.

Over the course of the hour, we heard alternatively that Epstein’s deal was the fault of Florida state prosecutors, or maybe the judge, or his superiors at main Justice, or the career prosecutor. One America News, an organization that astoundingly gets press credentials to events like this, even tried to pin all the blame on Robert Mueller. But it was never Acosta’s fault. Never ever.

According to Acosta it was definitely the fault of Epstein’s victims, who he repeatedly blamed for “not coming forward” even though many have come forward and Acosta knows full well that his office strung those victims along making what a federal judge has branded “material omissions” in the process. Acosta tried to argue that a culture of victim shaming kept him from building a case based on victim testimony. And then he proceeded to victim shame them in real time for allegedly “not being loud enough.”

Acosta, whose current office oversees sex trafficking efforts and has affirmatively tried to slash those by upwards of 80 percent, shockingly argued that his former office — you know, the Department of Justice — couldn’t possibly have brought Epstein to trial based on all that evidence they were putting under seal because, golly, what if they were to lose? That’s why this had to be swept under the rug with a 13-month prison sentence that let Epstein walk free every day for 12 hours, because there was a chance the government might lose. Left somewhat unresolved at the presser was how this fear of failure jived with the decision to immunize Epstein’s co-conspirators. Apparently, that was an effort to get the goods on Epstein… but then they didn’t get enough evidence? So, why did they immunize these people again? It’s all so confusing.

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To hear Acosta tell it, the U.S. federal government are a bunch of hapless losers who never can win the big one instead of an entity wielding awesome prosecutorial power and securing convictions over 90 percent of the time. In the reality-based timeline that the rest of us live in, the only barrier to Epstein’s conviction in 2008 was a lack of will.

Specifically Acosta’s lack of will.

Earlier: Jeffrey Epstein’s Arrest Forces Us To Ask: Which Dirtbag Lawyers In This Case Will Face Their Own Music?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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