Fantastic secretary of labor. Trump, known to be consumed by Media Coverage of his administration, was clearly not distraught about the deal that acosta negotiated for epstein, but concerned about the bad press acosta was getting. From the washington post, quote, trump did not originally want to be seen as cutting ties with him over a decadeold episode, even if some of his longest advisers believed the departure was inevitable. Even with the News Coverage and facts of the case. With acosta out of the picture, trump is trying to put distance between himself and epstein. I was not a fan of Jeffrey Epsteins. You watched people yesterday saying that i threw him out of a club. I didnt want anything to do with him. That was many, many years ago. It shows you one thing, that i have good taste, okay. Other people, they went all over with him. They went to his island. They went all over the place. He was very well known in palm beach. But Jeffrey Epstein was not somebody that i respected. I threw him out. In fact, i think the great James Patterson, whos a member of maralago, made a statement yesterday that many years ago i threw him out. Im not a fan of Jeffrey Epstein. The pedophile, the prosecutor, and the president. That is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Former u. S. Attorney joyce vance. White house reporter for the washington post, ashley parker. With us at the table former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi. Karine jeanpierre is back, Senior Adviser to moveon. Org and executive editor for bloomberg opinion. Tim obrien is here. I want to start with you, joyce vance, and just leap into a parallel universe where on the day that it is unsustainable for the labor secretary to continue to serve in the Trump Administration, no one utterst word victim. No one says a word about a mischarge of justice. All they say is read the James Patterson fictionalized version of the sex scandal. I never liked him and i and did the make acosta go. What is happening, joyce . Trump just doesnt seem to understand that justice isnt just another deal. And this is so lard i think to watch as a prosecutor knowing that when you enter into a plea agreement in a case, you have equity thats you have to be aware of. You have a community. You have victims. You have the courts and youre trying to do the right thing. Youre not just delivering a deal. The president apparently views this as purely transactional. Its an old deal. Without any concern for the victims that were left behind when this happened. And the notion that acosta is leaving without any conversation about the victims and about what this means for women in the era of me too is i just think tonedeton tonedeaf completely. And for acosta to walk out the door without cleaning up any of the damage of his own reputation, frank, is stunning to me as a person who handled former communications for high governmentlevel officials to not stand there and say, i did my best but im sorry i provided over a system that failed these young victims. These werent women. These were girls. These were children. Some of their lives were ruined. Some of them are dead. I mean, to not we cover the dehumanization of migrants at the border. We cover the flippant way donald trump talks about dictators. But we dont have a lot of tangible examples of people actually being dehumanized in realtime. The treatment of this case, of the epstein victims, has been the dehumanization of girls and women in realtime. Were living in an era where children are being detained in inhumane conditions so why would we expect any kind of remorse or apology from acosta or trump . And lets be clear, acosta leaving is not because of moral outrage from the president. Correct. Its because hes reading the tea leaves and he understands more than we probably give him credit for where this is going. Public corruption investigators are tearing apart the u. S. Attorneys handling of this in miami. And this isnt going to get better. Its going to get more and more ugly for acosta and likely his staff at the time in miami. And this image of acosta standing for half an hour on the white house lawn next to lawn is going to come back to haunt them during the 2020 campaign. Let me press you on that. What does that investigation look like . I will tell what you it looks like, interviews of all of the ausa and fbi agents in south florida that handled the case, the Police Officers who interacted with those agents and prosecutors. And theyre going to figure out what was the phone activity, who was dangled money, cash, jobs by epstein and or his cutouts, and where are these people today . Who objected to the deal in the u. S. Attorneys office . And was that documented or not . Your colleague bob costas said something on this Program Wednesday that sort of sent a chill up my spine. He said that what every journalist in the country woorj his or her salt worth pursuing is the answer to what was trumps knowledge . What was trumps knowledge of Jeffrey Epsteins conduct . I havent seen that reported out anywhere but i wonder your theory of that case. Well, we know just from that one comment that has gotten some attention, i believe it was to new York Magazine in 2002, that the president had at least some general awareness. Theres that quote where he praises Jeffrey Epstein as a great guy and sort of says something along the lines of this is not verbatim, but something along the lines of like me, he enjoys beautiful women. His often a lot younger. So this was an open secret in the circles Jeffrey Epstein ran, in the circles that the president traveled in. It was something the president sort of spoke openly about. Again, we dont know if he knew that Jeffrey Epstein was raping and abusing young girls but he was certainly aware Jeffrey Epstein was often surrounded by very young women. Tim obrien, let me put up the headlines ashley just referenced. Trump called him a terrific guy who enjoyed younger women before denying a relationship with them, so he was close enough to know what kind of women he surrounded himself in. Jeffrey epstein was a terrific guy. From the new york times, donald trump once said and now hes not a fan. That story, i believe, chronicled a party where the women were flown in and only two men in attendance 28 women, i think, Jeffrey Epstein and donald trump in vanity fair, him, epstein and 28 girls. Florida man drops the dime on trump. When the president stands on the white house lawn and said he barely knew Jeffrey Epstein, thats not supported by the facts. They knew each other well from 2002 until 2011. He traveled on his jet at least once. Was seen at a member of maralago in name or substance but he was there all the time and the president wanted him to be there. I spent about two years, a lot of time with trump in the mid2000s, and he routinely talked about Jeffrey Epstein as someone he admired, he knefelt y were in sync. What did he admire about limb . That he was able to pursue women whenever he wanted to, he was able to spend money the way he wanted to. He didnt care about the law or civility or women being targets because thats frankly the way the president approaches the world. At one point when i was working on the book about him, he took me on the upper east side. He just bought the rights to the miss America Pageant. We went up there and one of the main things im excited about in this pageant is i can introduce these girls to eric, his son eric. And we went into the offices of the pageant, and it was just a very uncomfortable environment with him around these women because i think his sole reason for buying the pageant, it was not a business decision, it was an access to women decision. And some of the court papers that have come up, Jeffrey Epstein said he wanted to buy a Modeling Agency because he wanted to use a Modeling Agency in the same way the president at the time, donald trump, used his agency, again, access to women. So theres a lot of similarities to how these two men approached the world. And it is not credible that the president didnt have a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and they were worried about it up until election day. You know, shortly before the election, michae kohn and david pecker at the national inquirer, who were having discussions about whether or not questions would come about Jeffrey Epsteins island and who had visited the island. So it was clearly front of mind for them, at least until election day. You know, i think its important to be careful, every journalist thats been on this show, every lawyer whos been on this show has been careful but donald trump is credibly accused of sexual deevance and misconduct ranging from rain from e. Jean carroll to misconduct and things that do not fall under a criminal umbrella but there are examples of him walking behind stage at the miss America Pageant scrutinizing the nearnaked bodys of young women. So i guess my question there also was during the election, a woman filed a jane doe lawsuit alleging trump raped her in Jeffrey Epsteins town house in new york. She withdrew the suit. The lawyer said she withdrew the suit because after she filed it, she got death threats. I dont know anything about the facts around that other than that. But i do think that as you say, its not just hearsay with trump. There are a lot of examples of him walking up to a boundary and many examples of him prosecuting it in the way epstein did. Why isnt this a more salient political anchor around his neck . Why and i remember when Hillary Clinton made an issue out of some of these accusations. She i think aligned herself with miss ma chateau, who donald trump called miss piggy. But its all the same bucket of abusive, denigrating, derogatory and these accusations far more serious criminal conduct around women. Its a good question because i think what has happened is, as we all say everything we see is not normal, right. None of this is normal. But what donald trump has managed to do is make it normal. Its the most bizarre kind of backward thing that were seeing. Just what you were describing. I was thinking about what you were saying about epstein and donald trump. Those are things you hear in a movie. Those are things that end the political career of anybody before donald trump. Thats so true. You hear about it in the movies but its playing out in the white house right in front of us. We see donald trump doing a perp walk with alex acosta and giving a 30minute press conference. First of all, alex acosta never should have had that job in the first place. Lets not forget who was supposed to have that job, the labor secretary he wanted was accused of dating his wife. These are the types of people hes bringing into the white house, into his administration. So what is not normal becomes in this weird way normal because were talking about all of these awful things week after week after week. Next week it will be Something Else. Ashley parker, maybe this is oversharing, i started to wonder in this sort of vain abnormalizing Donald Trumps conduct, those who talk about it and cover it are part of the problem. Do you ever sit down and type a lead and say i cant believe i just wrote that . I wrote that line, the president , a pedophile and prosecutor and i thought, where am i . I will say theres something they started doing at the post which is recognizing stuff happens that in any other administration would end a career or dominate a news cycle and it sort of takes up three hours or six hours because Something Else push its from the headlines. Were aware of that. So we sometimes try to go back and take an issue that may have moved out of the news cycle but is still really important and give it the second look that it deserves. An example was we sort of took some time and went back and really recreated what happened in President Trumps response to charlottesville. Weve done that on some other issues. But as a journalist, there is sort of an industrywide recognition that a lot of these issues dont necessarily get the time they deserve because theres just such a cascade and firehose of news in terms of what you were saying, the headlines were writing, the leads were writing and even the time we can devote to some of this coverage. I appreciate we all kind of hit pause here and let this sink in. I want to let this sink in for you and for joyce. This is Kamala Harris on alex acostas defense of the agreement. Thats not normal either. Lets listen. Any prosecutor worth their salt, especially one who understands the nature of these cases which any prosecutor should if theyre taking the case on, knows that this is the exact kind of case that is typical of somebody whos preyed on children. That case should go before a jury and that case should go to prison for a long period of time. Hopefully he will now. Hopefully he will. But the thing i found, obviously, you can tell by the tone of my perspective, the thing that i found so troubling, disheartening and really unbelievable was the way that acosta has described the challenge he had, because its like saying its really difficult to make an omelet. Well, get out of the kitchen if you dont know how to cook. Ashley, this is something ive heard from the right and the left in the Legal Community this week. Any thoughts on sort of how acostas i know the performance was viewed as passable from the president s perspective and the white house, but the legal arguments are not holding up with the test of time. Well, there is a sense again in the white house that he sort of initially, he made a somewhat forceful case for why he made that decision at the time. But in talking to people as the week progressed, there was also especially when we heard from the prosecutor, the state attorney general, i believe, saying this was absolutely false and when does a federal attorney general defer to the state . He had a 53page indictment. He absolutely could have gone forward if he had wanted to. I believe that has become increasingly the prevailing sentiment even in the hours after his News Conference there was a sense he quote unquote won by doing himself no harm. One final point, again the formative aspect in the white house is everything, there were some people who did want to see him be more animated and i was talking to someone today who said they wanted him to show more compassion, not just animated himself but the president might have wanted to see. These were young women, these were children, they were raped, they were abused and it might have been at the very least, regardless if it would have saved his career or not, an appropriate moment to speak to them and show some empathy and compassion. Joyce, ashley referenced that 53page indictment. Why dont we reference that lest we let the facts get too far. Facing a 53page federal indictment, epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life. But a deal was struck, an extraordinary plea agreement, that would conceal the full extent of epsteins crimes and the number of people involved. That one sentence or one paragraph, two sentences seems at the moment to be the sum total of alex acostas legacy. At the time that acosta made this decision, doj guidelines for prosecutors required us to charge the most serious, readily provable offense in a case. So for acosta to abandon this indictment that he had prepared, it was supported by evidence with victims who were willing to come forward, is inexplicable. And in mind siengt nhindsight a years later for him to stand up and defend that decision is unexplicable. On the same timeline i had a case in my office, i was an appellate chief about making pornography with young victims. The sentence received was not the maximum sentence but it was long enough to keep that defendant in jail functionally for the rest of his life and she was outraged. She wanted to appeal to the judge. She wanted every last minute, every last day she was entitled to of this sentence. Thats how strongly prosecutors feel about these cases and about protecting young children. I dont understand acostas point of view here. I want to ask you about the role of money. We talk a lot about mischarge of justice for women. Acosta trotted out this ludicrous argument about things were so different, it wasnt 1907. It was 2008. But money seems to be the variable, not a point in time. So much of what acosta said in his weak defense simply doesnt ring true. For one of the most disturbing portions of my fbi career, i supervised a crimes against children squad in northern california. And i have to tell you, it still impacts me today. And i can tell you this, no u. S. Attorney, no assistant u. S. Attorney ever said to me, im feeling a lot of pressure from this defense team. I really think the money theyre throwing around on this is going to hurt us. Weve got to cut a deal. It does not happen when youre talking about exploiting children. Does it happen in white collar crime, bigtime corporate defense . I have been involved in indictments and convictions in cases and fortune 100 corporations and, yes, they have incredibly powerful attorneys and, yes, theres a lot of money floating around. But to hear acosta equate that kind of environment to a case where women, young girls, are being exploited sexually, it simply doesnt happen. Somethings wrong with this picture. I continue to say thats why we see public corruption prosecutors involved in this sdny case. You know also to what frank was saying about how the pressures are only going to step up on acosta in florida, theres another piece of this in new york with i think the other shoe to drop, which is what kind of records did jeffrey he steep have in his vaults . Are there films or photographs . Yeah, ashleys paper had reported