Alexander Acosta, Donald Trump’s new pick for labor secretary, is a much more traditional choice than the failed nomination of fast food CEO Andy Puzder. Acosta has government experience, including at the National Labor Relations Board and in the Justice Department, he’s been confirmed by the Senate previously, and as far as we know at this point he has neither presided over a company with a major record of labor law violations nor been accused of domestic violence. That’s not to say he doesn’t have some blemishes on his record. While Acosta was assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department under George W. Bush:
Brad Schlozman, a deputy assistant attorney general, "improperly considered political and ideological affiliations" when he hired attorneys to work at the Civil Rights Division, according to a Justice Department inspector general report written in 2008. "Attorneys hired by Schlozman were more than twice as likely to be Republican or conservative than those attorneys Scholzman was not involved in hiring," the report found. That consideration, the report concluded, violated the Civil Service Reform Act and department policy that bars discrimination in hiring based on political and ideological affiliations.
The agency concluded that Acosta and other Civil Rights Division managers failed to "exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices." Specifically, Acosta and Deputy Attorney General Wan Kim "failed to ensure that Schlozman's hiring and personnel decisions were based on proper considerations," the report noted.
Having presided over illegal hiring practices would, in a sane world, be a mark against a potential labor secretary. Acosta will face confirmation in Republican-world, however, where it’s probably a mark in his favor. Acosta also used his Justice Department role to attack voting rights, and, as U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, he was involved in a sweetheart plea deal for billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of what Politico describes as “having sex with dozens of underage girls,” a description that, last I checked, translated to “statutory rape.” Epstein, by the way, was a Mar-a-Lago member who Trump described in 2002 as a “terrific guy.”
So this is what it looks like when Trump makes a safe choice.