are there any differences, any distinctions with this case? does this differ from any or all of it? well, the circumstances of this case are different, obviously. and by the way, i don t know how jeremy kept all of that straight last night. that is a long list. pretty good off the top of his head. ashley and i cover this for a living and i don t think we could recite that for you. anyhow, the case is different but the circumstances mirror some of the other patterns. and what we ve seen with trump is he will dig in initially and stand by his people, especially in the face of criticism from the media or from lawmakers because trump s tendency is to view that as unfair and biased in some way. but then he can just flip a switch and you won t necessarily know when it s coming. but at some point if trump feels like the person, the secretary, is causing too much political damage, is creating too many bad headlines over too many days, which is certainly a possibility here with acosta, he
i have seen these interviews and i can t i generally can t begin to fathom what these victims have been through. at the same time i think it s 5a important to stand up for the 5a prosecutors of my former office and make cl u$at what they were trying to do was help these victims.xd that last question to acosta, the one about the victims, was from katie rogers of the new york times who s standing by to join us in a moment. late today the former palm beach state attorney fired back with ó statement that reads in part, i can emphatically state that mr. acosta s recollection of this matter is completely wrong.é@ if mr. acosta was truly concerned with the state s case and felt he had to rescue the matter, forgive me, he would
now, i m not saying that can erase the time they spent çó together in palm beach, the photos of the two of them together, the fact that when epstein s address book was leaked he had i believe it was 14 numbers for the president, his wife, his daughter, people in his orbit. there clearly was a relationsh)p there.e1 it has seemed to have genuinely] cooled over the last decade or d so, and that is certainly the pr message that the president and 1 the white house is pushing and wants the public to understand. so phil rucker, let s be sure we have this right. the president wanted a cabinet secretary to go to that cabineti briefing room, and i don t know if anyone has raised questions about the w3 stagecraft here of a secu?áary with the imprimatur of the federal government standing behind the seal of that cabinet department wrapped in the american flag to send a message about his handling of a case about a sex offender.ok what does that reveal about 2019?
not that audience of one liked k 7nat he saw.e1 mimi rocah, your legal ñi assessment of this plea deal perhaps now in light of this w3 if anything, frankly, i have as much skepticism of that plea deal if not more.jf i think acosta tried to make two main arguments. the first one was that he was e1 this knight in shining armor wh] had to come in and rescue this case q revived it. yeah. from the state that was going to give epstein no jail time. well, i don t know if that s true. i don t know what the facts are1 in terms of what the state plea or the federal plea was. what i do know is this. every federal prosecutor including myself has done dozens of cases where the state has a p plea firstpl:
i think he delivered a very nuanced and very, you know, legalese-heavy argument for his prosecutors in particular.e1 he defended his prosecutors nearly every single question he received. his argument was nuanced. it was measured. he took nearly an hour of questions. it got to the point where every third question was asking him why he was not apologizing to victims. toátrráh(oint across.i] he came armed with testimony from his prosecutors that detailed how hard it was to get victims to stay the course back he acts like this is in the 1950s, but it was only 12 years ago. but whatever the case, he said it was a different time. on the other hand, he took an hour away from the president.i] for better or worse, er(resident who programs his presidency.e1 he has gotten a lot of news coverage. +yçó he reached the level where it was time for him to speak out. and now it s sort of whether or1