Article snippet: WASHINGTON — Trying to tamp down calls for his resignation, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta on Wednesday defended his handling of a sex-trafficking case involving now-jailed financier Jeffrey Epstein, insisting he got the toughest deal he could at the time. But the former Palm Beach County state attorney is disputing Acosta’s account of why he signed off on a secret sex trafficking plea deal involving Epstein. Acosta insisted Wednesday that the deal in which Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges was the toughest he could have gotten at the time. And he said prosecutors were working to avoid a more lenient arrangement that would have allowed Epstein to ‘‘walk free.’’ But Barry Krischer, who was in office at the time, says Acosta’s recollection ‘‘is completely wrong.’’ Krischer, a Democrat, said that the U.S. attorney’s office’s always had the ability to file its own federal charges and that a lengthy indictment was prepared but ‘‘abandoned after secret negotiations between Mr. Epstein’s lawyers and Mr. Acosta.’’ In a nearly hour-long news conference, Acosta retraced the steps that federal prosecutors took in the case when he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida a decade ago, insisting that ‘‘in our heart we were trying to do the right thing for these victims.’’ He said prosecutors were working to avoid a more lenient arrangement that would have allowed Epstein to ‘‘walk free.’’ ‘‘We believe that we proceeded appropriately,’’ he said, a cont... Link to the full article to read more