Anthony Scaramucci — yeah, that guy — has rallied to the defense of Alex Acosta, the Secretary of Labor who, from all that appears at this point, gave pedophile Jeffrey Epstein a sweet plea deal instead of insisting on the stiff sentence his crimes warranted. Scaramucci tweeted:
@SecretaryAcosta is doing a great job and obviously @realDonaldTrump likes him so time to do a number on him. This is DC: how it works. There is fake news and “planted” news. The people are tired of this. Hang in there Alex!!
Scaramucci has no idea what kind of job Acosta is doing. He didn’t spend the ten days he was in Washington working for Trump, before the president canned him, looking into goings on at the Labor Department. Had he done so, he would have learned that Acosta is doing precious little to overturn the leftist regime of his predecessor, Tom Perez.
More to the point, Scaramucci has no idea whether the Acosta story is fake or planted. The Miami Herald story appears to be painstakingly researched. If nothing else, the report is awfully long and detailed for a “planted story”).
Moreover, the Herald relies heavily on court documents. There is none of the Washington Post’s trademark “this story is based on conversations with 23 people familiar with the subject” (none named).
Julie Brown, an investigative reporter for the Herald responded to Scaramucci, tweeting:
1. I’m not in D.C. and have very few D.C. connections
2. “Planted” ? Hmm. I don’t even know what that means
3. This was honest to god, shoe leather reporting & digging through dense court documents for a year. No one contacted me to do this story. No one. It was totally my idea.
Scaramucci contradicted his first tweet by later tweeting:
The news is 14 years old and surfacing now because @SecretaryAcosta is doing a good job. The senate looked at it and confirmed him.
Which is it, Mooch, old news everyone knows about or fake news? It’s precisely because the Herald’s story contains plenty of new information, not previously known and not considered by the Senate, that Scaramucci is up in arms, claiming that the news is fake.
If Acosta or someone on his behalf wants to dispute the specifics of the Herald’s story, fine. As much as I dislike the job Acosta is doing at DOL, I don’t want him ousted, or denied a better job, based on false reports.
However, so far, to my knowledge, no one has refuted anything of substance in the Herald’s report. And if Anthony Scaramucci is the best ally Acosta can find to advocate on his behalf, there’s unlikely to be any serious refutation.
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