CABINET/LABOR/LEGAL/SEX ABUSE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Donald Trump said Tuesday [7-9-19] that he feels ‘very badly’ for Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, as the embattled Cabinet official faces an onslaught of calls by Democratic lawmakers to resign for his role in brokering financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 plea deal on sex abuse charges…Last year, former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House was reviewing the situation in the wake of a Miami Herald report that detailed the scope of Epstein’s abuse and the deal he was granted. The White House didn’t answer questions on whether they conducted an inquiry then. Less than an hour before the president’s remarks, Acosta took to Twitter to defend his approval of the Epstein non-prosecution agreement he helped negotiate more than a decade ago as a U.S. attorney in Miami, which resulted in a lenient 18-month sentence…Trump claimed Tuesday that he first met Acosta at the outset of his administration, ‘when I made the deal to bring him on’ to lead the Labor Department, and praised Acosta’s performance in the role since being confirmed by the Senate in April 2017.
–Quint Forgey, “Trump: ‘I feel very badly’ for Acosta,” Politico, July 9, 2019 1:27 pm