It was already clear before this week that Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, as a federal prosecutor a decade ago, had mishandled the Jeffrey Epstein case: He gave the well-connected hedge-fund manager the deal of a lifetime for sex-trafficking underage girls, immunized his co-conspirators from potential charges, and denied his victims a chance for justice. Epstein’s arrest by federal prosecutors in Manhattan over the weekend only underscored his failure.

So perhaps there was nothing Acosta, amid mounting criticism, could have said at Wednesday’s press conference to make things right. But the proper approach, obvious to many, was to show some contrition. He could have acknowledged his mistakes and apologized for them. He could have highlighted why others shouldn’t discount victims of sexual abuse in the future as he once did. He could have even resigned.

Acosta chose another path. He gave an astonishingly Trumpian performance: admit no error, shift responsibility, and blame the media. It was an inexplicable choice as well as an ironic one, since it may not be enough to save him from the president’s mercurial whims.

Acosta, who served as the top federal prosecutor in Miami from 2005 to 2009, began by praising the Southern District of New York for arresting Epstein over the weekend. “I’m pleased that the New York prosecution is going forward,” he told reporters. “His acts are despicable and the New York prosecution affords an opportunity to more fully bring Jeffrey Epstein to justice.”

The acts described in the indictment took place between 2005 and 2007, well within the timeframe of Acosta’s handling of the case. That brought renewed scrutiny of the non-prosecution agreement struck with Epstein in 2007, which scrapped a 53-page indictment in exchange for pleading guilty to lesser state prostitution charges and registering as a sex offender. Instead of confessing error, Acosta on Wednesday gave only the most threadbare acknowledgement that he might have made mistakes. “We now have twelve years of knowledge and hindsight and we live in a very different world,” he said. Reporters failed in multiple attempts to elicit an apology from him. Asked if he has “no regrets,” he replied, “No regrets is a very hard question.”