Acosta probably saved himself with Trump — even though press conference was a disaster: WaPo reporter
Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta's press conference excusing and deflecting blame for his sweetheart plea bargain with accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was, by all accounts a disaster.
And yet, on CNN's "The Situation Room," Washington Post journalist David Swerdlick told host Wolf Blitzer that he expects President Donald Trump is satisfied with Acosta's performance — and that his job may now be safe.
"From my point of view, did Secretary Acosta help himself on the PR front and with the president? I think the answer is yes," said Swerdlick. "President Trump likes people who go out cool as a cucumber, get everything down in the weeds and the legalese, and don't address the big moral questions."
"If the question is, did he explain the sweetheart deal? No," Swerdlick added. "He said at one point that Jeffrey Epstein, quote, 'needed to go to jail.' If he needed to go to jail, why did he get such a short sentence when he had 12 hours a day of work-release? When you're talking about a crime that involved sexual crimes involving children?"
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He 'can't understand why he is being impeached': CNN reports Trump is asking 'why are they doing this to me?'
President Donald Trump is reportedly "distracted" by impeachment while vacationing at Mar-a-Lago as the United States Senate trial begins.
"A source close to the White House who speaks to Donald Trump regularly said the President has appeared 'distracted' by the impeachment trial that begins on Tuesday, telling people around him Friday night at Mar-a-Lago that he 'can't understand why he is impeached,'" CNN's Jim Acosta reported Saturday. "'Why are they doing this to me,' the source quoted Trump as saying repeatedly."
Rod Rosenstein's legal defense in lawsuits from Strzok and Page won't hold up under oath: legal experts
Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein claimed responsibility for the release of text messages between then-FBI attorney Lisa Page and then-FBI official Peter Strzok.
Emails released in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed the highly unusual release by Sarah Isgur Flores, who at the time was the spokesperson for Trump's Department of Justice (she is now overseeing CNN's 2020 election coverage).
Flores instructed reporters to not cite the release of the documents to the Depart of Justice.
GOP forcing Hunter Biden to testify could 'completely backfire' on them — here's why
With public pressure mounting for Senate Republicans to allow officials like former National Security Adviser John Bolton and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to testify at President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, some in the GOP are now suggesting a trade — allowing these witnesses in exchange for Hunter Biden, the focus of Trump's Ukraine conspiracy theories, to take the stand as well and face aggressive questioning about his role in Burisma. This is a GOP attempt to distract from the allegations against Trump by changing the subject to the Bidens.
But as CNN's Michael Smerconish noted on Saturday, this strategy might not even work.