Alex Acosta Can Dodge Questions All He Wants. His Epstein Deal Looks Worse By the Day.

Rip Torn died on Tuesday. In his later years, he played Patches O'Houlihan, the profane coach in the movie DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. One of his drills involved throwing wrenches at his players on the theory that if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. He also reminded them constantly of the five D's of dodgeball.

"If you're going to become true dodgeballers, then you've got to learn the five D's of dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge!"

In the spirit of the late Coach O'Houlihan, I would like to commend Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta for being a true dodgeballer. Over the course of his press conference on Wednesday afternoon, called so Acosta could explain the sweetheart plea deal he'd cut with accused sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein while Acosta was a U.S. Attorney in Florida, there was enough dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging to fill five sequels to the original movie.

It was a perfectly Trumpian press conference: Acosta denied the plain facts in front of the world, blamed a whole host of other people for how ridiculous the plea deal looks now, declared himself a victim of changing mores, discreetly assigned the press some of his own problems, and generally emphasized that his agreement with Epstein was the best he could get at the time. Whether that's enough to save his job is still an open question, but he's certainly with the administration*'s program on dealing with political crises, especially if there is sexual misconduct involved.

Acosta took many questions Wednesday but didn’t always answer them.

Acosta's primary scapegoats were the local police in Florida, whom he accused of botching the investigation so badly that he and his office had to step in.

“I wanted to help them, that is why we intervened, and that’s what the prosecutors of my office did. They insisted that he go to jail and put the world on notice that he was and is a sexual predator...There was value to getting a guilty plea and having him register. The world needed to be on notice that he was a sexual predator.”

Acosta then confounded his own story. Having said he stepped in because he thought the state prosecutors might bungle the case, according to what he said on Wednesday, Acosta realized that his own case was so weak that he negotiated a now-notorious featherbed of a non-prosecution deal. (Epstein spent less than 10 hours a day, six days a week, in a county holding cell, and he was allowed a car and driver to go to his office.) Acosta's valentine to Epstein also brought criticism that the U.S. Attorney's office had failed to notify Epstein's Florida victims of the terms of the deal. This is the point on which a federal judge said Acosta's deal violated federal law. Acosta's answer to that charge on Wednesday was nearly incoherent, except for his assertion that his staff tried to notify the victims, but that it already was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Great.

Epstein allegedly committed many of his crimes at his palatial townhouse in Manhattan.

And the only reason he put on this performance in the first place was that the New York prosecutors busted Epstein and made Acosta's dive look even more egregious. And, if this account in USA Today about Epstein's New York digs is anywhere near accurate, Acosta's deal is going to look even worse as the weeks go by.

The memo said the search turned up not only evidence supporting its sex trafficking allegations against Esptein but also "hundreds – and perhaps thousands – of sexually suggestive photographs of fully – or partially – nude females." While investigators were still reviewing the material, the memo said one of the girls, according to her attorney, "was underage at the time the relevant photographs were taken."

It noted that other photographs were found in a locked safe that included CDs with handwritten labels including the descriptions "“Young [Name] + [Name],” “Misc nudes 1,” and “Girl pics nude.”...

In a report on the mansion, valued at more than $55 million, The New York Times noted that its artwork includes, on the second floor, a commissioned mural of a “photorealistic prison scene that included barbed wire, corrections officers and a guard station, with Mr. Epstein portrayed in the middle.”

The home also includes such oddities as a hallway covered with artificial eyeballs originally made for wounded soldiers, a life-size female doll hanging from a chandelier, and a chess board with custom figures, many dressed suggestively and modeled after one of Epstein's staffers, The Times reported.

It's like Grey Gardens with sex toys.

I make it 50-50 that Acosta keeps his job.

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Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.