Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse slammed Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s two days of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation as less than forthcoming.
Ten survivors of Epstein, the well-connected sex offender who took his own life rather than face trial for his crimes, came to Blanche’s testimony in the Hart Senate Office Building. Many of the survivors have said the Justice Department refuses to meet with them and have also criticized the fact that Blanche has said no more files related to Epstein will be released.
Democrats have hoped to make hay out of the way Blanche handled the Epstein case. On Thursday, they had Danielle Bensky, a victim of Epstein’s who said she was trafficked to him and that he blackmailed her to recruit more girls for him, testify as a witness against Blanche.
“Todd Blanche has been at the helm of the release of child sexual abuse material, the outing of Jane Does, and the exposure of over a hundred victims’ identifying information in documents that describe intimate acts of abuse, including my own,” Bensky testified.
“Instead of seeing the release as its own crime and holding the man who led the release to account, we are about to place him in the highest position of law enforcement in our country.”
A day earlier, Sen, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked the acting AG if he would meet with Epstein survivors. Blanche said that he is prohibited from meeting with survivors. He also said that he met with counsel for survivors.
But Marina Lacerda, one of 10 survivors who showed up to Blanche’s hearing, pushed back.
“It is not illegal. We can meet with you, Mr. Todd Blanche, at any time with legal counsel or without, so we’re more than willing to talk to you about new information that we have,” she addressed the AG-wannabe through The Independent.
Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney before he was tapped to be the deputy attorney general, became the acting attorney general after Pam Bondi was run from office largely in response to the backlash to her DOJ’s handling of files related to Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019. President Donald Trump has called the Epstein probe a “hoax.”
Haley Robson, a survivor of Epstein’s who did not attend the hearing, went even further in her criticism of Blanche and his comments about meeting with lawyers for the victims.
“That is the exact bull**** that I am talking about,” Robson told The Independent. “My attorney has never met with the DOJ or Todd Blanche, to my knowledge.”
Robson also echoed a criticism that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) made when he asked Blanche Wednesday about making a trip to Florida to interview Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The former socialite would be moved shortly after that interview from a federal prison in Tallahassee to a minimum-security, so-called “Club Fed” facility in Texas.
“You know it’s really, really, really disgusting and offensive that he would take two hours out of his day or two days out of his week to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s a known perjurer and a liar, and he can’t even take two hours to get on a Zoom conference call with any of the survivors in our legal representation,” Robson said.
Still, there is growing consensus that Blanche must meet with Epstein survivors. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) a retiring swing vote on the committee, said that he would not vote to confirm Blanche unless he did agree to meet with them.
“The Obama administration failed to take action,” Tillis told reporters. “Admittedly, the Trump administration didn’t do much. The Biden administration didn’t do anything. This could be the first administration that’s actually shown respect to the Epstein victims. That’s what I want.”
When The Independent asked if he had met with Epstein survivors, Tillis acknowledged, “I have not. I intend to.”
And he is not the only one. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost his primary after Trump endorsed his Republican rival, told The Independent that Blanche should. “I think it’s a good idea,” he said. Cornyn would not commit to meeting with Epstein victims, though Maria Farmer is a constituent of his from Texas.
“I’m not the one being nominated for attorney general,” he said. “But I think it would be a good idea, just as a practical matter, for him to just eliminate that issue, if they want to meet with him, I think he ought to ought to talk to him.”
And while Blanche touted the Trump administration as being transparent in its handling of the Epstein affair, the release of files only came after every House Democrat and four Republicans filed a discharge petition to comple them being made public.
That vote came after the DOJ and the FBI had released a two-page memo saying Epstein likely killed himself and said any further release would put victims of Epstein at risk.
“We can’t believe the audacity to say these lies when we are there, when we are present,” Andrea Sterling, another survivor of Epstein told The Independent. “We are in disbelief.”
Sterling also criticized that nobody save for Maxwell has been prosecuted for Epstein’s exploitation of girls and young women.
“I mean it’s just corruption, corruption,” she said. “Where are they hiding? They’re saying that the files that are that are redacted is because it has meaningless information or repeated information, but it should just be released.”
Trump has repeatedly pushed back on people who have brought up Epstein. He notoriously broke with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and endorsed a successful primary challenge to Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky after he spearheded the discharge petition.
