Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche faced mounting pressure Thursday to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, with questions about Blanche’s handling of the release of the late sex offender’s investigative files dominating the second day of his confirmation hearing to lead the Justice Department.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said at the hearing that he wanted Blanche to sit down with the survivors before he would vote to advance his attorney general nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said there “should not be any reason” for Blanche not to arrange the meeting within the next two weeks — the earliest the committee could hold a vote.
“I’m trying to get to ‘yes,’ but this is a very important part of getting to ‘yes,’” Tillis said.
Tillis is one of two Republicans on the committee who have not committed to voting for Blanche, who faces a narrow path to confirmation. The other, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, told reporters Thursday that he remained undecided and agreed “it would be good” for Blanche to meet with the survivors.
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“It’s a terrible situation because nobody can go back and fix what happened to these poor people,” Cornyn said. “But I’m happy to have him meet with them.”
As deputy attorney general, Blanche oversaw the Justice Department’s release of millions of documents from the government’s investigation into Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019 while facing federal sex-trafficking charges. The department — and Blanche himself — faced broad criticism for failing to redact names and identifying details of some victims, many of whom said the exposure retraumatized them and subjected them to threats and harassment.
Blanche’s refusal to meet with survivors emerged as a flashpoint during questioning Wednesday by ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). Durbin tried to extract a pledge that Blanche would sit down with survivors, several of whom attended both days of the hearing, within 30 days.
In response, Blanche initially said he was barred by ethical rules from meeting with survivors who had lawyers and offered instead for them to meet with a Justice Department staffer who had extensive experience prosecuting sex crimes. He said the meeting could occur as early as that day. As Durbin continued to press him, he briefly indicated he may sit with them, but did not appear to offer a definitive answer.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the identity of the staffer Blanche mentioned and clarify Blanche’s statements.
Blanche did not testify at Thursday’s hearing. The committee heard from five witnesses, including a survivor of Epstein’s abuse, Dani Bensky, who testified that she and other survivors had repeatedly asked to meet with Blanche, to no avail.
“Todd Blanche has never attempted to listen to us, the crime victims,” Bensky said.
Fighting back tears at times, Bensky said Wednesday was the first time since the Epstein file release began last year that Blanche had ever floated the possibility of a meeting. “He simply ignored us for the past eight months,” she said. No one from the Justice Department had contacted her as of Thursday, she added.
She blasted Blanche for spending two days interviewing Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, before the Justice Department transferred Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas known for its lax conditions. Blanche, she said, had treated the file release as a “political crisis” and prioritized “reputational harm to the administration over survivors.”
Bensky’s testimony also shed light on the department’s errors in redacting the files, which were supposed to be scrubbed of victims’ names and personal details. Her name and other information, including her phone number and old address, turned up in three batches of documents, she said.
By the third batch, she said, “it was hard to believe that this was not intentional.”
The committee also heard emotional testimony from one of the Republicans’ witnesses, Jennifer Bos, who spoke about how the body of her daughter was found in a container near the Illinois home of a Mexican man whom federal immigration officials say was in the country illegally.
The suspect, Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, was initially released pending trial on state charges of concealing a body, then rearrested by federal authorities on charges including abuse of a corpse.
Bos praised Blanche for investigating her daughter’s death and said she trusted him to prevent future tragedies. “The justice that we’re seeking now is the assurance that their deaths won’t be ignored and won’t be in vain,” she said. “I 100% believe Todd Blanche will be the one who will deliver that justice.”
Republicans also brought in former Attorney General John Ashcroft to testify in favor of Blanche.
The move had high symbolic value: During the George W. Bush administration, Ashcroft famously defied pressure from the White House officials to reauthorize a controversial domestic surveillance program while recovering from surgery in a hospital bed. His appearance seemed to be an effort to quell accusations from Democrats that Blanche was appointed to do President Donald Trump’s bidding.
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