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Trump: Will Look 'Very Carefully' at Labor Secretary's Role in Prosecuting
Child Sex-Trafficking Case

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will be
   looking "very carefully" at how his labor secretary, Alexander Acosta,
   agreed to a light sentence in a child sex trafficking case against
   billionaire hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago
   when he was a federal prosecutor in Florida.

   As demands from lawmakers for Acosta's resignation grow in Washington,
   Trump defended him, saying he has been "an excellent secretary of
   labor" for the last 2 1/2 years. The U.S. leader said that "many
   people" were involved in the Epstein case, but that in hindsight "what
   happened 12, 15 years ago...I would think maybe they wish they'd done
   it a different way."

   "We'll be looking at it very carefully," the U.S. leader said.

   Trump spoke a day after federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex
   trafficking charges against the 66-year-old Epstein that could, if he
   is convicted, send him to prison for 45 years. Acosta, when he was the
   U.S. attorney in Miami, agreed in 2008 to an Epstein guilty plea
   agreement under which he served 13 months in a local stockade, but was
   freed half of most days to go to work at his office.

   Two decades ago, Trump, years before he entered politics, posed for
   pictures with Epstein at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach,
   Florida. Trump in 2002 called Epstein a "terrific guy." "He's a lot of
   fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much
   as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

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