The more that Trump and his allies try to make Epstein’s victims go away, the more they keep coming back, one way or another. Of course Trump and his allies are not alone in this, but they’ve clearly taken the lead.
Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Todd Blanche—whose nomination hearings are scheduled for July 15 and 16—was a key player in trying to suppress the Epstein Files, and conducted an interview with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, followed by her illegal transfer to a minimum security prison and rumors that Maxwell might receive a pardon in exchange for her favorable testimony about Trump.
All this was immediately condemned by Epstein survivors and their families—most notably the family of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Epstein’s first accuser, Maria Farmer, and her sister, Annie Farmer.
“It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received,” they wrote in a joint statement. “Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency. Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas,” they wrote.
“This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes. The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.”
While Epstein’s crimes are staggeringly vast, including the rape of more than a thousand teenage girls, Blanche’s involvement in covering them up and his hearing to be considered as Attorney General, provide a uniquely sharp focal point for demanding accountability.
As Maria Farmer testified in a hearing held by House Democrats in May, she first reported Epstein and his co-conspirators in 1996, and when the FBI questioned her, they “said they were familiar with some of the perpetrators I identified, and gave me every reason to believe they would respond,” but then did not. “That failure, that single moment when law enforcement refused to take action, set off a cascade of injustice and grave repercussions to my sisters, my family, and so many others, and to me personally…. The FBI’s decades of failure and inaction led to countless more girls and young women suffering abuse and trauma that could have been prevented.”
That failure continues to this day. Confirming Blanche as Attorney General would not only continue that failure, it would reward it with one of the highest offices in the land.