Alex Acosta

In another presidential administration, the news that a Cabinet member had been involved in a sweetheart deal for a billionaire pedophile might lead to said Cabinet member being fired. But in the Trump administration, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta was confirmed even though it was already public knowledge that, as a U.S. attorney, he had let billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein off the hook for serious crimes to plead guilty to lesser charges and receive an 18-month sentence. Still, you might think that Acosta’s job would be in danger after a federal judge’s recent decision that the deal with Epstein had violated a victims’ rights law because, at the request of Epstein’s attorneys, Acosta kept the deal secret from the victims, denying them the chance to object.

But no. The White House is apparently not in any rush as it’s “looking into” the situation. Acosta may be called to testify before Congress, but even that is taking shape slowly, maybe because House Democrats are so busy with other investigations into the Trump administration, while the Republicans who control the Senate don’t want to touch this issue. And in a particularly disgusting side note, the New York Times suggests that if Acosta is vulnerable, it may be because he hasn’t endeared himself to big business by being as swiftly and aggressively anti-worker as expected. Secretly let a rich guy off the hook for raping and trafficking as many as dozens of children, fine, but just don’t move too slowly to set a really low overtime eligibility threshold!

“Of course, federal prosecutors are not perfect, and mistakes and lapses in communication with victims—even tragic ones—do happen,” former federal prosecutors Mimi Rocah and Berit Berger wrote at NBC News. But “this appears to be a calculated plan by the prosecutor in charge—Acosta—acting in concert with Epstein’s defense attorneys to hide a plea agreement from young victims because they did not want bad publicity for Epstein, they did not want other perpetrators exposed and/or they did not want the victims to object.” Rocah and Berger call for the Department of Justice to reopen the Epstein investigation and, noting that the Labor Department has a “significant role to play in combating and prosecuting human trafficking cases and protecting the rights of minors,” call for Acosta to resign or be fired. They’re not the only ones: Another former federal prosecutor writing at The Hill similarly calls for Trump to dump Acosta.

But what would have been a months-long scandal if it happened during a Democratic presidency is, in the Trump era, a relatively minor story in the week it happened, because there’s so much corruption and so many outrages that “made a secret deal with high-priced lawyers to keep victims of child rape from having a say in their rapist’s sentencing” seems minor and forgettable. And the White House appears to be dragging its feet in hopes that the story will blow over quickly.