The Senate on Thursday confirmed Eugene Scalia to succeed Alex Acosta, the labor secretary who resigned in July amid an outcry over his role in a plea deal for the multimillionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Scalia is a partner at the Washington law firm Gibson Dunn, where he has represented companies such as Walmart, Ford and UPS in workers rights claims. He is also the son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.
Scalia was confirmed Thursday on a 53-to-44 vote.
Much has been written about high-powered wealth manager Jeffrey Epstein’s controversial plea bargain for child sex trafficking from Alexander Acosta — how it gave him just a 13-month minimum-security sentence with daily work-release, how it let him register as a much lower-level sex offender than it should have, how it shut down the FBI investigation and kept the names of his co-conspirators secret, how it may have violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by not disclosing the details to his alleged victims.
But as Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle wrote on Saturday, there is one massively important aspect of the plea bargain that has been comparatively overlooked — Epstein’s agreement not to contest lawsuits brought by his alleged victims.
At first blush, that might seem like a concession on Epstein’s part. In fact, that’s a spectacular deal for him. As a billionaire (or at least something like it), it didn’t hurt Epstein in the least to pay out settlements to his victims. On the other hand, in doing so, he guaranteed those victims’ silence going forward, which is why he went so many years without being prosecuted for other offenses. If even prosecutors didn’t know who the victims were, they couldn’t investigate to see if there were any additional sex crimes that could be brought against him.
View the complete July 13 article by Matthew Chapman from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.
Alex Acosta announced Friday he will resign as Labor secretary amid mounting scrutiny over his role in negotiating a secret plea deal for financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is accused of sexually abusing dozens of young girls.
Standing alongside Acosta on the South Lawn of the White House, President Trump said he “did an unbelievable job as secretary of Labor” and added it was Acosta’s decision to step down.
“This was him not me, because I’m with him,” Trump told reporters before leaving for a trip to Wisconsin and Ohio. “I hate to see this happen.”
View the complete July 12 article by Brett Samuels and Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.
The former Florida State Attorney who was in charge of the office prosecuting the case against Jeffrey Epstein – until federal prosecutors intervened – is blasting Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta for his claims at Wednesday afternoon’s press conference.
The way Secretary Acosta, who was the federal prosecutor who gave Jeffrey Epstein the sweetheart deal allowing him to avoid possibly years or decades in jail, the billionaire child sex offender “would have gotten away” had he not gotten involved.
But NBC News Correspondent for Investigations Tom Winter reports that Former Palm Beach State Attorney Barry Krischer says Acosta is “completely wrong.”
Labor secretary’s role in cutting deal with Jeffrey EpsteinSome Republicans in Congress are looking for more answers about Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta’s conduct as U.S. attorney, but they’re not joining calls by Democrats that he step down because of a generous plea deal he cut with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
One Republican member of the Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that Acosta should explain his handling of the plea agreement with Epstein.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said he would get out ahead of whatever may emerge from any inquiry from the Justice Department, but Senate Republicans more broadly are taking a wait-and-see approach.
President Trump on Tuesday defended Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who is facing calls to resign over his role in a non-prosecution agreement with multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein in a sex-crimes case.
Trump told reporters at the White House that Acosta has been a “very good” Labor secretary and that Acosta probably wished he had handled the Epstein plea deal “a different way.”
The president added that he would be looking at the case “very carefully.”
View the complete July 9 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta on Tuesday defended the 2008 non-prosecution agreement with multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, which he helped broker, but acknowledged new sex crimes charges could “more fully bring him to justice.”
“The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence,” Acosta wrote in a string of tweets. “Now that new evidence and additional testimony is available, the NY prosecution offers an important opportunity to more fully bring him to justice.”
The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence.
— Secretary Acosta (@SecretaryAcosta) July 9, 2019
Back in 2002, when Jeffrey Epstein was known only as a mysterious financial whiz with a private island and a roster of A-list friends, being friendly with him was something to boast about. And Donald Trump did.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine that year for a story headlined “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.” “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Now, Epstein is in jail, charged with sex trafficking by federal prosecutors who allege he abused dozens of female minors in New York and Palm Beach, Fla. He is no longer a friend anyone would want to claim.
On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed their indictment against multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who is accused of trafficking underage girls for sex.
Federal authorities say they seized nude photos of girls from his Manhattan townhouse, the New York Times reported.
Law enforcement found “hundreds perhaps thousands of sexually suggestive photographs of fully or partially nude females, safe containing compact disks with labels,” reported CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz.
View the complete July 8 article by Tana Geneva from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.
NOTE: Why are we posting this article? The Trump Administration’s Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, was the U.S. Attorney who cut the “sweetheart deal” for Mr. Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected multimillionaire who was sentenced to just more than a year in jail to resolve allegations that he molested dozens of young girls, has been taken into custody in New York on new charges having to do with sex crimes involving minors, a person familiar with the matter said.
The precise nature of the charges — and how they differ from the previous allegations to which Epstein, now 66,pleaded guilty in 2008 — could not immediately be learned. Epstein attorney Martin Weinberg did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where Epstein is expected to appear in federal court this week, declined to comment.
The latest charges add a significant new wrinkle to the considerable political and legal saga surrounding Epstein. The wealthy financier — who counted among his friends President Trump and former president Bill Clinton — pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida of soliciting prostitution in a controversial arrangement that allowed him to resolve far more serious federal allegations of molesting young girls.
