On Thursday morning, during the second day of acting Attorney GeneralTodd Blanche’sconfirmation hearing, Sen.Thom Tillis, R-N.C., dropped anunexpected ultimatum: While he acknowledged he was leaning toward supporting Blanche, he expected him tomeet with Epstein survivorsbefore he would be willing to vote for him in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
That vote is expected to happen on July 30, according to a committee source.
“There should not be any reason why, based on what Mr. Blanche said yesterday, if he said that he would do it today, then he can certainly do it over the next two weeks,” said Tillis.
Tillis’ words felt like “a glimmer of humanity and genuine emotion,” according to a statement released by Dani Bensky, the Epstein survivor who testified at Thursday’s hearing.
But survivors’ resulting meeting with Blanche at Justice Department headquarters late Thursday afternoon left her and other survivors feeling betrayed.
“Blanche treated the meeting as a mere ‘check-the-box’ exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation. … He did not adequately account for the release of materials that exposed survivors’ identifying information and images, and he offered no credible plan to investigate and pursue accountability beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,” Bensky said in a statement.
MS NOW has since learned more about the meeting through conversations with one meeting attendee and a representative of two other attendees. Both spoke to MS NOW on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution against them or other survivors.
MS NOW also reached out to the Justice Department and to Blanche. The DOJ did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
“It wasn’t all cordial,” Blanche told reporters after the meeting,according to the AP. “Because there’s something that they want that I don’t think I can give them, which is some form of justice. And I want to be able to give justice in the form of prosecutions, and maybe we can do a prosecution at some point,” Blanche said, then added, “I don’t know.”
According to the representative, survivors were nervous but hopeful at the beginning. Blanche attended the meeting with Alessandra Serano, the newly appointed national coordinator for child exploitation and trafficking, alongside other DOJ and FBI personnel. And he even whispered to Sky Roberts, the brother oflate Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, that he empathized with him because Blanche had lost his sister too.
But then, according to the representative, Blanche told the 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.”
Blanche insisted he personally was powerless to open an investigation, pointing instead to other individuals around the room as people who can.
The attendee who spoke to MS NOW said Blanche maintained, “The FBI has the power to open investigations, not me.”
“I’m just the attorney general,” Blanche added, according to the representative.
Some participants nonetheless strove to find common ground. Roberts asked Blanche, “What do you need from us to help you open an investigation?”
