Alex Acosta did a bad job on the Jeffrey Epstein case. This column was nearly finished when news broke Friday that he would resign as labor secretary. I was going to argue that his lapses did not justify joining the nakedly political mau-mauing by Democrats who have no interest in exploring the behavior of Democrats who are neck-deep in a monstrous pedophile’s activities. My friend Jennifer Braceras has ably addressed that point in a Washington Examiner column. I was also going to add that I’d shed no tears if President Trump forced Acosta out — easy for me to say, since I think (a) he should never have been nominated in the first place, and (b) his commitment to Trump’s deregulation agenda has never been sufficiently ardent.
Under the circumstances, I’ll spare you a few hundred words of critique on Acosta’s indecorous performance. Instead, to cut to the chase, I do not believe we can yet total up the wages of the sweetheart deal he cut for Epstein while he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida (SD-Florida). The commentariat is glibly assuming the courts will give the feds a second bite at the apple by allowing the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) to prosecute the charges that Acosta forfeited. I don’t think so.
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