In other words, Epstein was originally charged with sex trafficking with girls as young as 14, which ordinarily would have carried heavy jail time. Instead of bearing the full brunt of such serious charges, however, Acosta worked out with Epstein's powerful defense lawyers a plea deal that amounted to a slap on the wrist.
Yes, he had to register as a sex offender and was sentenced to 18 months in prison -- which he was allowed to serve by spending one night a week in jail, then released from that after 13 months -- not quite the same as "spending time in jail." So who was thinking about the plight of these girls, if it was not the prosecutor?
Acosta defends this light sentence saying that it was a question of what he was charged with and whether it would be a state or a federal crime. He says the state would have given him no jail time and no sex offender registration. Not true, says a judge from the Florida state court at the time; they took sex trafficking in young girls quite seriously.
Because of some new charges of sexual trafficking with underage girls against Epstein, the case has been reopened in the Southern District of New York Federal Court, and the perpetrator, Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested again and jailed. Jeffrey Berman, the Federal Prosecutor at the SDNY has been scathing in his comments about how the case was handled years ago.
Acosta is not involved in the current case. However he is coming under heavy fire, in part because of changed attitudes toward sexual victims, especially young ones, since the original case. But there's no doubt; even 12 years ago, what Acosta agreed to was a shockingly light sentence for this wealthy, influential man with criminal behavior toward teenage girls. Epstien legal defense team included Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr, among others.
But, really, how much has changed with such insensitive men? My original focus was to be on Acosta as Labor Secretary, after I saw an announcement yesterday in The Guardian that Acosta has proposed a major cut in the Labor budget, including slashing 80% of the funds for the agency that combats sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of children.
Doesn't sound like Trump's Labor Secretary has learned much since the Epstein original case that's coming back to haunt him. The question now is whether Trump will keep him in the cabinet. He shouldn't.
I haven't even mentioned Trump's relationship with Epstein, but they used to be close friends -- once throwing a party at Mar-a-Lago where they invited 28 young women (supposedly of legal age) and with Trump and Epstein as the only two guests. It was a mock "calendar competition." Trump now says he and Epstein fell out years ago over a business deal and haven't spoken in years.
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2. (Washington Post's Paul Waldmon) tells us that the most unpopular politician in America is not Donald Trump, but Mitch McConnell, who is up for re-election. And he now has a serious challenger in Amy McGrath. Here's part of what she said in her announcement speech, quoted by Waldmon:
"Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace. How did it come to this? That even within our own families, we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame? Well it started with this man [picture of McConnell playing in the background], who was elected a lifetime ago, and who has, bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise. Where dysfunction and chaos are political weapons. Where budgets and health care and the Supreme Court are held hostage. A place where ideals go to die."
Waldmon continued: . . . "McGrath is right. There are two figures more responsible than anyone else for making Congress what it is today: Newt Gingrich, who made politics more vicious and mean than it had been before, and McConnell, who realized that in the pursuit of power any norm could be violated, any rule broken, any tactic justified if you’re shameless enough. And if you win, you’ll pay no price for what you did along the way. It’s no accident that one biography of McConnell was titled The Cynic, nor that McConnell counts the theft of a Supreme Court seat as one of the proudest moments of his career.
"McGrath, a retired fighter pilot and lieutenant colonel in the Marines, talks a lot about her military service, in part because that’s where she made her career and in part because she hasn’t held elected office before. She lost a bid for a House seat in 2018 to incumbent Rep. Garland 'Andy' Barr, falling short by just three points in a district Trump won by 16.
"Which was an admirable performance, but she has a major problem she’ll have to find a way to solve, and it goes by the name of Kentucky. Simply put, the state is really, really conservative. Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by 30 points. The last time a Democrat won a Senate race there was 1992 . . .
"Which brings us back to McConnell’s unpopularity, which isn’t just national but is also true at home. Despite having been elected and reelected six times, McConnell is deep underwater. In this poll, he’s the only senator in America whose disapproval cracks 50 percent; in this one his disapproval was 56 percent, with only 33 percent approving. . . The question is, are Republicans who are displeased with McConnell going to vote for a Democrat to replace him? And are they going to do it in a presidential election year? . . .
". . . [McGrath] probably won’t have trouble raising money . . . But what it may take for her to prevail is an absolute Democratic blowout on the national level, an election that not only sends Trump packing but reverberates all the way down the ballot.
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3. (And based on a VOX article): With just over a year until the 2020 elections, the Senate is finally going to have a briefing on election security. Democrats have been pushing for it -- but for some reason Mitch McConnell has resisted. McConnell's concerns are said to be about not wanting to interfere with state and local control over their own election processes. Well, there's that. But isn't this a federal election? Doesn't the federal government also have a major interest in the security and fairness of the process?
Ralph
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