NATION
Thursday, July 11, 2019
East Oregonian
A7
Facing calls for resignation, Acosta defends Epstein deal
By JILL COLVIN AND
RICHARD LARDNER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
—
Insisting he got the best deal
he could at the time, Labor
Secretary Alex Acosta on
Wednesday defended his
handling of a sex-traffick-
ing case involving now-jailed
financier Jeffrey Epstein
as Acosta tried to stave off
intensifying
Democratic
calls for his resignation.
“We believe that we pro-
ceeded
appropriately,”
Acosta told reporters at a
news conference at Labor
Department headquarters,
where he retraced steps fed-
eral prosecutors took in the
case a decade ago when he
was U.S. attorney for the
Southern District of Flor-
ida. Acosta said state author-
ities had planned to go after
Epstein with charges that
would have resulted in no
jail time until his office
intervened and pressed for
tougher consequences.
“We did what we did
because we wanted to
see Epstein go to jail,”
he said. “That was the
focus.” He added: “Facts
are important and facts are
being overlooked.”
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Labor Secretary Alex Acosta calls on a reporter to ask a question during a news conference at
the Department of Labor on Wednesday in Washington.
Acosta is being assailed
for his part in the secret 2008
plea deal he signed that let
Epstein avoid federal pros-
ecution on charges that he
molested teenage girls. But
he was unapologetic Wednes-
day as he declared his office
did the best it could under the
circumstances.
The deal Acosta helped
broker has come under new
and intense scrutiny after
prosecutors in New York on
Monday brought new child
sex-trafficking charges alleg-
ing Epstein abused dozens
of underage girls in the early
2000s, paying them hundreds
of dollars in cash for mas-
sages, then molesting them at
his homes in Florida and New
York. Epstein has pleaded not
guilty to the charges; if con-
victed he could be imprisoned
for the rest of his life.
Acosta said he wel-
comed the new case, call-
ing Epstein’s acts “despi-
cable.” Earlier he defended
himself on Twitter, credit-
ing “new evidence and addi-
tional testimony” uncovered
by prosecutors in New York
for providing “an important
opportunity to more fully
bring him to justice.”
Acosta has long made the
case that it was better to use
the threat of a federal indict-
ment to force Epstein into a
state guilty plea, with restitu-
tion to victims and registra-
tion as a sex offender, than it
would have been to “roll the
dice” and take Epstein to trial.
But the result, to critics, was
egregiously lenient.
Acosta’s office had got-
ten to the point of drafting
an indictment that could have
sent Epstein to federal prison
for life. But it was never filed,
leading to Epstein’s guilty
plea to two state prostitu-
tion-related charges. Epstein
served 13 months in a work-re-
lease program. He was also
required to make payments to
victims and register as a sex
offender.
Pressed on whether he had
regrets, Acosta repeatedly
suggested that circumstances
had changed in the years since
the plea.
“We now have 12 years
of knowledge and hindsight
and we live in a very differ-
ent world,” he said. “Today’s
world treats victims very, very
differently.”
Trump has, so far, also
defended Acosta, praising his
work as labor secretary and
saying he felt “very badly”
for him “because I’ve known
him as being somebody that
works so hard and has done
such a good job.” Still, he said,
he would be looking at the cir-
cumstances of the case “very
closely.”
Though Trump may have
made the tagline “You’re
fired!” famous on his reality
show “The Apprentice,” he
has shown a pattern of reluc-
tance to fire even his most
embattled aides. Trump, for
instance, took months to dis-
miss Scott Pruitt as Environ-
mental Protection Agency
administrator despite a diz-
zying array of scandals,
and allowed Jeff Sessions to
remain as attorney general for
more than a year even as he
railed at and belittled him.
Trump typically gives
his Cabinet secretaries the
opportunity to defend them-
selves publicly in interviews
and press conferences before
deciding whether to pull the
plug. And he encouraged
Acosta to hold a press con-
ference laying out his think-
ing and involvement in the
plea deal, according to a
senior administration offi-
cial, speaking on condi-
tion of anonymity to discuss
internal deliberations.
‘A floodier future’: Scientists say records will be broken
By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
— The federal government
is warning Americans to
brace for a “floodier” future.
Government
scientists
predict 40 places in the U.S.
will experience higher than
normal rates of so-called
sunny day flooding this year
because of rising sea levels
and an abnormal El Niño
weather system.
A
report
released
Wednesday by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration predicts that
sunny day flooding, also
known as tidal flooding, will
continue to increase.
“The future is already
here, a floodier future,” said
William Sweet, a NOAA
oceanographer and lead
author of the study.
The report predicted that
annual flood records will
be broken again next year
and for years and decades to
come from sea-level rise.
“Flooding that decades
ago usually happened only
during a powerful or local-
ized storm can now happen
when a steady breeze or a
change in coastal current
overlaps with a high tide,” it
read.
The nationwide aver-
age frequency of sunny day
flooding in 2018 was five
days a year, tying a record
set in 2015.
But the East Coast aver-
aged twice as much flooding.
The agency says the level
of sunny day flooding in the
U.S. has doubled since 2000.
Nationwide, the agency
predicted, average sunny
day flooding could reach 7 to
15 days a year by 2030, and
25 to 75 days a year by 2050.
“We cannot wait to act,”
said Nicole LeBoeuf, acting
director of NOAA’s Ocean
Service. “This issue gets
more urgent and complicated
with every passing day.”
Global sea levels are ris-
ing at a rate of about 3 mil-
limeters a year, or about
an inch every eight years,
according to Rutgers Uni-
versity researchers, who pre-
dict that by 2050, seas off
New Jersey will rise by an
additional 1.4 feet.
The study noted floods
interfering with traffic in
Your electric
meter is
getting an
UPGRADE!
northeast states, swamping
septic systems in Florida
and choking Delaware and
Maryland coastal farms with
saltwater over the past year.
Baltimore experienced 12
days of high-tide flooding
from 1902 to 1936. Within
the last 12 months, it experi-
enced an additional 12 days.
Robert Kopp, a leading
climate scientist with Rut-
gers University, who was not
involved in the study, said it
confirmed many well-estab-
lished trends.
“It’s simple arithmetic: If
you have higher sea level,
you will have tides causing
flooding,” he said. “We’re
not talking about disas-
ter flooding. We’re talking
about repetitive flooding that
disrupts people’s lives on a
daily basis. It’s sometimes
called ‘nuisance flooding,’
but it has real impacts and
costs.”
The report cited the dis-
ruption of commerce in
downtown
Annapolis,
Maryland, where parking
spaces are lost to flooding.
A 2017 study put the price
tag on lost economic activ-
ity at as much as $172,000.
The water table has risen to
ground level and degraded
septic systems in the Miami
region, and farmlands in the
Delmarva Peninsula in Del-
aware and Maryland have
been damaged by salt water
encroaching into planted
areas.
High-tide flooding is
causing problems including
beach erosion, overwhelmed
sewer and drinking water
systems, closed roadways,
disrupted harbor operations,
degraded infrastructure and
reduced property values —
problems which “are nearly
certain to get much worse
this century,” the report
read.
The report’s statistics
cover May 2018 through
April 2019.
Umatilla County
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From the archives of Athena Public Library, City
of Echo, Milton-Freewater Area Historical Society,
Pendleton Round-up, Tamástslikt Cultural Institute
and Umatilla County Historical Society
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