Acosta exits; big Cabinet turnover keeps growing
WASHINGTON» Adding to the lengthy list of departures from President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said Friday he’s stepping down amid the tumult over his handling of a 2008 secret plea deal with wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is accused of sexually abusing underage girls.
Trump, with Acosta at his side, said Friday he did not ask his secretary to leave and “I hate to see this happen.” The president, who publicly faults the news media almost daily, said Acosta put the blame there too.
Acosta “informed me this morning that he felt the constant drumbeat of press about a prosecution which took place under his watch more than 12 years ago was bad for the Administration, which he so strongly believes in, and he graciously tendered his resignation,” Trump tweeted later in the day.
Trump said Pat Pizzella, the department’s deputy secretary since April 2018, would succeed Acosta on an acting basis.
Pizzella served in the administrations of Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. A coalition of civil rights, human rights, labor and other groups opposed his nomination by Trump to the department’s No. 2 slot, citing Pizzella’s record on laAlexander bor rights.
Acosta Acosta was the U.S. attorney in Miami when he oversaw a 2008 non-prosecution agreement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal trial but plead guilty to state charges and serve 13 months in jail. Similar charges filed against Epstein by federal prosecutors in New York this week had put Acosta’s handling of the 2008 agreement with the now-jailed financier back in the spotlight.
Years ago, Epstein had counted Trump and former President Bill Clinton among his friends, but Trump said this week he was “not a fan.”
Acosta said he didn’t want his handling of Epstein’s case to overshadow the president’s agenda and said his resignation would be effective in seven days.
Epstein paid suspected coconspirators. Soon after The Miami
Herald began reporting on his favorable treatment by law enforcement in an early 2000s sex crimes investigation, financier Jeffrey Epstein paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to people investigators had identified as possible co-conspirators — payments federal prosecutors allege might have been meant to influence them. The allegation came in a filing by federal prosecutors in New York.
In seeking to keep the multimillionaire jailed pending trial, prosecutors in New York argued that Epstein had a history of trying to obstruct inquiries into his misdeeds. Prosecutors say records show that in 2018, days after a favorable plea arrangement he received, Epstein wired $100,000 and $250,000 to co-conspirators in the case.