Expectations. And ambassador quits. Britain ambassador to the United States resigns after leaked diplomatic cables show he called President Trump insecure and incompetent triggering a series of insults from the president. Im wolf blitzer and youre in the situation room. Announcer this is cnn breaking news. Breaking news, embattled labor secretary alex acosta goes public to defend the still shocking plea deal he oversaw as a u. S. Attorney a decade ago. Which gave multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein a light sentence for sex Crimes Involving underage girls. Acosta said his office stepped in when state prosecutors were ready to let epstein walk. Epstein faces new federal charges for allegedly running a sex trafficking ring and abusing minors. Sources say President Trump told acosta to step forward amid a drum beat of calls for his resignation. And House Democrats are scrambling to get ready for the testimony of Robert Mueller. Theyre trying to make the most of limited time but some are already cautioning against expecting too much from the hearings. The testimony is seen as a make or break moment for democrats pushing for an impeachment inquiry. Ill speak with senator James Langford of the Senate Homeland security committee. And our correspondents and analysts will have full coverage of the days top stories. But lets begin with the breaking news. Our chief white house constituent jim acosta standing by. The president s embattled labor secretary is defending his actions as a u. S. Attorney a decade ago. Reporter in an update, so far officials here at the white house believe labor secretary alex acosta handled himself well at the press conference this afternoon as we saw as he came out in front of the cameras, there were no apologies or regretted from the embattled labor secretary regarding his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and secretary acosta claimed he still has the support of the president even though mr. Trump hasnt always stood by cabinet secretaries facing intense scrutiny in the past. Under fire over a plea deal he once cut for multimillionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, alex acosta defended the handling of the case as a prosecutor. No regrets is a hard question. You look back and say what if. Reporter with you in victims coming forward questioning whether acosta was too lenient in the case, the secretary was asked whether he would have reached the same agreement today. Time and again he pointed the finger at state prosecutors in florida claiming they were going to allow epstein to avoid jail time. Todays world treats victims very, very differently. Todays world does not allow some of the victim shaming that could have taken place at trial. I dont think we can say take a case that is this old and fully know how it would play out today. We did what we did because we wanted to see epstein go to jail. There is a value to a guilty plea because letting him walk, letting what the state attorney was ready to do go forward would have been absolutely awful. Reporter the secretary made it clear hes not about to resign, talking up his relationship with President Trump while working in a plug for the administrations record. My relationship with the president is outstanding. He has, i think, very publicly made clear that ive got his support. I serve at the pleasure of the president. I thought yesterday he was kind and he showed great support. We are here because we are part of an administration that is creating jobs reporter Senior Administration official told officials President Trump was first to fight back against democrats calling for the resignation and President Trumps attitude was screw them and blasted reports hes on thin ice with mick mulvaney. Our relationship is excellent too in that any articles to the contrary are in his words b. S. Reporter in true Trump Administration fashion the secretary took a swipe at the media. Ive read this and one of the things i find interesting is how facts become facts because theyre in a newspaper thank you very much. Reporter and the question is whether the secretarys performance was enough to stay on. One of mr. Trumps Close Friends was betting that his days were numbered. I think the plea agreement he did is indefensible. I think that hes not going to stay for long. Reporter but for now it seems secretary acosta may be able to stay on for now. But the secretary may want to look back at how other embattled cabinet members have fared in the past and as one senior official put it one day youre working for President Trump and one day you are not. And there was one other departure as the British Ambassador to the u. S. Announced he is stepping down after some of his past criticisms of mr. Trump surfaced in the news media and one Top White House official told reporters that is the right course of action. That is one departure over here at the white house they were welcoming. Jim acosta at the white house. Thank you very much. Lets dig deeper. Kara scannell is here in the situation room. Youve been going through the legal documents around this 2007 and 2008 case. What did you find out. So in combing through the record in this case and we found a number of letters between 2007 and 2008 just after this nonprosecution agreement was reached where lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein were reached out to alex acosta still trying to get him to knock two of the prosecutors off the case and to end the prosecution completely. When that failed, epstein legal team brought in ken starr, the lawyer who prosecuted or went after bill clinton in the whitewater investigation and Monica Lewinsky and had him apeep to the department of justice in washington and reached out to the Criminal Division and the Child Exploitation division and the Deputy Attorney general and in one claim they said the prosecution of epstein was politically motivated because of his, quote, close personal association with former president bill clinton. Now the Deputy Attorney general office, one of the assistants there had responded saying that the prosecution was, quote, appropriate. Now remember, this prosecution wasnt even one that was ever really supposed to be made public. It involved no jail time, and no actual federal charges. Interesting. Because when alex acosta, the labor secretary, was asked today to look back at his handling of the case, and i want to be reseiss, he didnt appear to accept direct responsibility. In fact he repeatedly pointed to others. Right. He pointed to both the state prosecutors on the case and then he even was passing some of the blame on to his line assistants mentioning specifically one of them and the conduct and actions that she had taken in this case. Now that runs counter to the record. You see in the Court Filings that acosta was involved. That he did have meetings with one of his former law partner who is representing Jeffrey Epstein and that also runs counter to the other cases that acostas Office Brought during that exact same time period with a prosecution of people for one person one victim that they had assaulted, not the alleged dozens of victims in this case. Cara spinel, thank you very much. And lets go to our correspondent manu raju up on capitol hill. You just spoke with the House Speaker nancy pelosi. What did she have to say about secretary acostas News Conference . Reporter well, nancy pelosi had been very clear she wants nothing short of alex acostas resignation as labor secretary and said in the aftermath of the indictment she made that clear in the days that have followed and as she was leaving a briefing this afternoon i asked her about the press conference and acosta making it clear he was not resigning and she said this he should resign or the president should ask him to step down. Reporter so the question is what do democrats do from here . Nancy pelosi made clear to me yesterday that she didnt really have much of an interest of launching a full scale investigation into this plea deal offered back in florida to Jeffrey Epstein. She said that they want to focus on the legislative agenda instead. But there are interests from one House Oversight committee who who sent a letter to alex acosta asking him to testify this month to lay out the details of the plea agreement. No word yet about whether or not acosta will come and whether or not it will lead to a subpoena from the House Oversight committee. So there is still some interest on capitol hill to get some more answers to what what has happened here and whether acosta properly moved forward with that plea agreement more than a decade ago, wolf. Manu, what are you learning about the democrats strategy for next weeks Robert Mueller testimony . Reporter well, behind the scenes, democrats are scrambling to make sure that they get the most out of their time. They have only two hours and two separate hearings and that is split equally between democrats and republicans so for the House Judiciary Committee with more than 40 members, each side will have one hour only to ask questions of Robert Mueller. Then the House Intelligence Committee will have a similar twohour arrangement split equally between the two sides and so democrats are trying to figure out a strategy to get the answers they want to their questions. Theyre beginning meetings tonight, tomorrow as well to figure out exactly what they want to ask to divide up the among the members and effectively stick to the script but what im hearing from democrats is they are concerned that just two hours isnt enough time to get exactly what they want, which is more information to get the special counsel detail all of the allegations in a more than 400page report and already democrats are saying that, look, we may need him to come back because that is just simply not going to be enough time. So right now Democratic Leaders are sorting out logistics to divide up how to ask the questions but youre hearing questions as the whole world is watching and people are saying this contains a dynamic that could lead to an impeachment of this president , but some saying there is not enough time to get all of their questions answered so at the moment, wolf, democrats are trying to figure out exactly how to maximize the limited time with the special counsel. Given the time, the democrats and the republicans for that matter, they have to be disciplined and ask questions rather than make speeches, which they often like to do in these kind of hearings. Manu raju on capitol hill, thank you very much. Joining us now republican senator James Langford of oklahoma, a key member of the Homeland Security committee. Senator, thanks so much for joining us. Good to be with you, wolf. So we have a lot to discuss but let me begin with the breaking news. Should the labor secretary alex acosta resign over his handling of the epstein case . No no, i dont think he should resign. I think we should allow the investigation and background work on this and what im disappointed is the coverage in the last 48 hours on every network is about President Trump and acosta as labor secretary and not spent time talking about the girls that were abused in the process and trafficked and about epstein and what the horrific acts that he did. So this is a hoffic crime. When you keep the focus on it being a horrific crime and let the department of justice do the investigation, in the second investigation and what happened in florida a decade ago and now in new york to finish this out with new additional witnesses, let that go and lets get this person prosecuted and get justice to folks and then allow that investigation to go forward and review what happened ten years ago. I i think it is appropriate and the focus needed to be on the kid lz and getting justice to them. The girls were 14, 15 years old. You make a very important point. Horrific. And they were clearly abuse and that raises the question why did alex acosta in south florida give this lenient plea deal with epstein . Yep, and i think those are all lodge itd matt questions to ask him and i that i the department of justice will pull that up and when they are retrying the issues and bringing up additional people with additional witnesses to go back and find out what did the state of florida do and why are they trugling to prosecute the case and how did it end up in the u. S. Attorneys office and how was the plea deal made and reasonable questions and those answers should come out. Because a federal judge as you know said alex acosta violated the law by not telling epsteins victims about the prosecution agreement that was worked out, the plea agreement that the government signed on to. Doesnt that alone warrant an apology from alex acosta . Yeah, lets get all of the details out on that and find out from acosta, again he has to go back and review this with the department of justice and make it right in any way we can. My impression is a lot of the push right now is because hes a trump cabinet member and not because of the case. My focus would be lets focus on the on him as an attorney and u. S. Attorney and find out what mistakes were made and how do we never do this again and make sure there arent other individuals in other places that we had a prosecution not fully fulfilled. You make an important point. These were 14 and 15, 16yearold girls who were abused in awful ways. Would you like to see secretary acosta come before congress so you could directly ask him questions about the decisions he made a decade ago . So i would like to see the same way we could do with any other u. S. Attorney, let the department of justice go through the process and do the investigation behind closed doors as they would for any other u. S. Attorney to be able to get the hard questions, a deposition or a closeddoor meeting will get much more out tv than a hearing. The only reason is a hearing is being discussed because hes trumps secretary of labor and if there was any other attorney we would be going through normal protocol. So i would ask that we go through normal protocol first and then if we dent dont get good answers then go forward. And was he properly vetted in the hearings by the senate and you voted to confirm and eight democrats opposed it and one indeed angus king of maine eight democrats supported his confirmation. One independent angus king also supported his confirmation. Was he properly vetted, only senator tim kaine of virginia asked questions about the epstein case. I was about to say yes. That information was available and people could see it and tim kaine was able to ask information of him personally and so the white house had looked at it and democrats and republicans in the senate looked at it and the questions that were asked and everybody thought they had sufficient answers through the process and now we have additional information, additional witnesses that are coming forward. Now that allows for a renewed prosecution in that case which is a good thing for the victims to be able to go through. Lets talk about the Robert Mueller upcoming testimony next week. One of muellers definitive conclusions at the beginning of the 450 page report was that the russians directly interfered in our 2016 president ial election. But in a briefing today up on capitol hill, Top Administration officials wouldnt even say whether President Trump has even received a comprehensive briefing on Election Security looking forward to 2020. I know you were at a sensitive briefing on this issue today as well. Does that worry you . No. That doesnt worry me because i was in the head of the fbi and office of National Intelligence and department of Homeland Security and multiple leaders in our government to get an update of what theyre already doing to protect our elections for 2020 and what they did for 2018. Lessons learned from 2016 and 2018 and what they are applying for 2020 and so they are a long way down the road. They were very clear theyve had interaction with the president and the white house and had a go on all of the work behind the scenes to be able to make sure that theyre working with individual states and all 50 states have an additional Cyber Protection on the election system that was not there four years ago so dealing with cybersecurity is much more advanced now than it was four years ago and a lot more awareness and interaction state to state and Interaction Agency to agency. So our questions were focused foc focused on 2020 and behind the scenes and im impressed with what has been done and what they did in 2018 and which we saw go off without a hitch in 2018 because of the aggressive measures they took. You make a very important point, senator, because all of the Top National Security intelligence, cybersecurity people in the administration, in the government, they are all on the same page, they have to do something very, very serious to stop the russians and they talk about it openly, they have no complaints about what the Mueller Report