Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for Acosta to resign, but also immediately ruled out impeaching him. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Jul 11, 2019
The political media has been glued to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal of late. Federal officials arrested him in New Jersey Monday, and raided his New York home where they found a veritable cornucopia of incriminating evidence, allegedly including lots of child porn. Then on Wednesday another accuser came forward, saying that Epstein had raped her when she was 15 years old.
The Trump administration, naturally, is up to its elbows in the Epstein story. Trump himself was friends with the guy for years, but Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta personally arranged an outrageous sweetheart plea bargain with Epstein in 2008 when Acosta was a U.S. Attorney in Florida.
So what is the opposition party going to do about it? Nothing of substance. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for Acosta to resign, but also immediately ruled out impeaching him. "It's up to the president, it's his cabinet. We have a great deal of work to do here for the good of the American people and we have to focus on that," she said. (Trump, of course, will do no such thing.) Senate Democrats who voted for Acosta and are still in office didn't even call for him to step down.
This failure to use their power to confront Trump and his administration is making Democrats an accessory to his crimes.
Acosta claimed that this new prosecution was based on "new evidence," but that is utterly preposterous. Epstein was known for decades as a notorious creep who had a thing for young girls. Trump himself said about him in 2002: "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown, who has been doggedly reporting this story for years, says they have identified about 60 victims -- including several willing to speak with reporters on the record, which is quite rare for a sex crime story involving a powerful billionaire. In terms of evidence, this would have been an open-and-shut case putting Epstein away for decades.
Read the full article at The Week.
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Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is the Managing Editor of The American Prospect. Formerly, he was a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
The political media has been glued to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal of late. Federal officials arrested him in New Jersey Monday, and raided his New York home where they found a veritable cornucopia of incriminating evidence, allegedly including lots of child porn. Then on Wednesday another accuser came forward, saying that Epstein had raped her when she was 15 years old.
The Trump administration, naturally, is up to its elbows in the Epstein story. Trump himself was friends with the guy for years, but Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta personally arranged an outrageous sweetheart plea bargain with Epstein in 2008 when Acosta was a U.S. Attorney in Florida.
So what is the opposition party going to do about it? Nothing of substance. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for Acosta to resign, but also immediately ruled out impeaching him. "It's up to the president, it's his cabinet. We have a great deal of work to do here for the good of the American people and we have to focus on that," she said. (Trump, of course, will do no such thing.) Senate Democrats who voted for Acosta and are still in office didn't even call for him to step down.
This failure to use their power to confront Trump and his administration is making Democrats an accessory to his crimes.
Acosta claimed that this new prosecution was based on "new evidence," but that is utterly preposterous. Epstein was known for decades as a notorious creep who had a thing for young girls. Trump himself said about him in 2002: "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown, who has been doggedly reporting this story for years, says they have identified about 60 victims -- including several willing to speak with reporters on the record, which is quite rare for a sex crime story involving a powerful billionaire. In terms of evidence, this would have been an open-and-shut case putting Epstein away for decades.
Read the full article at The Week.
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is the Managing Editor of The American Prospect. Formerly, he was a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
The political media has been glued to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal of late. Federal officials arrested him in New Jersey Monday, and raided his New York home where they found a veritable cornucopia of incriminating evidence, allegedly including lots of child porn. Then on Wednesday another accuser came forward, saying that Epstein had raped her when she was 15 years old.
The Trump administration, naturally, is up to its elbows in the Epstein story. Trump himself was friends with the guy for years, but Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta personally arranged an outrageous sweetheart plea bargain with Epstein in 2008 when Acosta was a U.S. Attorney in Florida.
So what is the opposition party going to do about it? Nothing of substance. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for Acosta to resign, but also immediately ruled out impeaching him. "It's up to the president, it's his cabinet. We have a great deal of work to do here for the good of the American people and we have to focus on that," she said. (Trump, of course, will do no such thing.) Senate Democrats who voted for Acosta and are still in office didn't even call for him to step down.
This failure to use their power to confront Trump and his administration is making Democrats an accessory to his crimes.
Acosta claimed that this new prosecution was based on "new evidence," but that is utterly preposterous. Epstein was known for decades as a notorious creep who had a thing for young girls. Trump himself said about him in 2002: "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown, who has been doggedly reporting this story for years, says they have identified about 60 victims -- including several willing to speak with reporters on the record, which is quite rare for a sex crime story involving a powerful billionaire. In terms of evidence, this would have been an open-and-shut case putting Epstein away for decades.
Read the full article at The Week.
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