Thread by @politico

BREAKING: Alexander Acosta stepping down as Labor secretary politi.co/2jCcDoP

Acosta is stepping down just two days after he defended a plea deal that he brokered as a U.S. attorney in Florida a decade ago for wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein politi.co/2SaCQHX

Acosta came under fire for the lenient 2008 plea deal after Epstein was re-arrested July 6 in New York City and charged with sex trafficking politi.co/2SaCQHX

Here's a look at how we got here: Things started to unravel for Acosta in November when the @MiamiHerald published a lengthy reexamination of the case politi.co/2SaCQHX

Things accelerated in February when a district court judge ruled that the 2008 plea deal violated the Crime Victims Rights Act.

The judge said it was because Acosta never revealed the terms of the deal to Epstein's victims before it was finalized. politi.co/2SaCQHX

Also in February, the DOJ opened an investigation into whether Acosta’s prosecution team committed professional misconduct in its handling of the Epstein case politi.co/2SaCQHX

Epstein aside, Acosta's relationships in the White House wore thin in recent months.

In January, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney cut back Acosta’s authority by requiring three White House aides to sit in on all the agency's regulatory meetings politi.co/2SaCQHX

Then in May, the White House took the unusual step of ordering Acosta to fire his chief of staff, Nick Geale, after concluding that Geale was damaging morale inside the agency politi.co/2SaCQHX

President Trump alerted reporters Friday morning of Acosta stepping down. Trump saw Acosta largely as a source of favorable monthly statistics about unemployment and job growth. politi.co/2SaCQHX