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Prince? >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. welcome to the leed, i'm jake tapper. we begin with breaking news. minutes ago in an attempt to keep his job and defend his reputation, secretary of labor alex acosta tried to defend himself from the chorus of calls for his resignation given the 2008 plea agreement called the sweetheart deal for child rapist jeffrey epstein. he was urged to hold this press conference by president trump. he's faced scathing criticism from the epstein many victims who were minors at the time of the alleged brutality. they are offended by what they see as a soft ...

Misconduct by acosta. today the secretary said he would be willing to be interviewed by those investigators but he remained defiant he did nothing wrong. jake. >> pamela brown at the white house. joining me now are two former federal prosecutors, elliott williams and elie honig. what do you make of acosta's characterization in the defense of the way his office handled the matter. >> what we saw was acosta essentially shift the blame to the line prosecutors in his office, the state prosecutors and even to some extent the victims. short of shaming them, he said, look, they still have civil -- ...

To have credibility on it. and in a case like this and i think at ex acosta was reaching for an excuse or some explanation for what happened. it seems that what is really going on here is that jeffrey epstein is an extraordinarily wealthy, powerful politically-connected person. that is why he believed it was going to be a gamble, a roll of the dice to take this to a court as opposed to settling it. >> and ryan, acosta was urged to do this press conference by president trump. obviously he's trying to save his job. who knows if it worked or not. how do you think he did? >> well, i think the cons...

Dice and bring a federal indictment. >> standing here today, are you basically saying that you feel that you did everything you could -- you got the best deal you could get and you have no regrets? >> we believe that we proceeded appropriately. >> reporter: cnn confirms acosta's statement comes after trump ordered him to explain himself publicly. >> my relationship with the president is outstanding. he has, i think, very publicly made clear that i've got his support. >> reporter: and while the white house is publicly defending acosta -- >> why are you talking about alex acosta and not jeffrey ...

He mentioned something about this meeting which was very suspect that he had with one -- a private meeting with one of epstein's defense -- >> the breakfast meeting at marriott with jay leftvich. >> and he tried to paint that in a way that isn't accurate. yes, he's correct, there was a deal that was signed in september. but there were other aspects of that deal that were -- he mentioned an addendum, that is key there was an addendum still being negotiated. and also the part about not informing the victims wasn't written into the agreement. that was what they discussed at that meeting. because ...