Todd Blanche met with Epstein survivors at Justice Department headquarters on Thursday afternoon, but the meeting did not calm the anger around his confirmation. Dani Bensky said survivors left feeling betrayed after Blanche was pressed to explain what, if anything, he would do next.
The timing mattered. On Thursday morning, Thom Tillis said he expected Blanche to meet with Epstein survivors before he would support him in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the panel was expected to vote on Blanche on July 30. By late afternoon, Blanche was in the room with survivors, including Bensky, who testified that the encounter only sharpened their doubts.
Bensky said Blanche treated the meeting as a check-the-box exercise meant to secure votes for his confirmation. She said he did not adequately address the release of materials that exposed survivors’ identifying information and images, and that he offered no credible plan to pursue accountability beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. For survivors who had been asking for more than a symbolic conversation, that landed as a refusal in all but name.
Blanche came out of the meeting saying it was not all cordial. He said there was something survivors wanted that he did not think he could give them: some form of justice. He said he wanted to provide justice through prosecutions and maybe could do a prosecution at some point, but also said, “I don’t know.” According to a representative, he told participants, “I’m not asking you guys to commit to anything today, and I don’t expect that I have to commit to anything, too.”
That exchange exposed the gap at the center of the meeting. Blanche said the FBI has the power to open investigations, not him, and added, “I’m just the attorney general.” When Sky Roberts asked what was needed to help open an investigation, Blanche replied, “I need testimony and evidence.” He also whispered that he empathized because he had lost his sister too. Bensky said there was a brief “glimmer of humanity and genuine emotion,” but she said that did not change the larger impression that survivors had been used as a hurdle to clear before a vote.
The meeting now sits between Blanche’s confirmation drive and the survivors’ demand for real action. If he wants their support, he will have to show more than sympathy and promises about prosecutions; he will have to show that the case can move beyond talk to an investigation that survivors can see and trust.
