After a year and a half on the job, first as assistant attorney general, then as acting attorney general, Todd Blanche finally agreed to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse. It’s not because Blanche has had a change of heart, however. He’s doing it to officially get the job of attorney general, the highest law enforcement office in the land. And he only agreed to do it because GOP Sen. Tom Tillis made it a condition for getting his vote, without which Blanche’s nomination would have died.
Several Democratic senators tried to get Blanche to agree to meet with the survivors on the first day of hearings, when Blanche himself testified, but he repeatedly weaseled out. Why shouldn’t he? They were never going to vote for him anyway. He had far too many red flags: groundless prosecutions of Trump’s enemies (many dismissed or rejected by grand juries), wholesale firings of career attorneys who worked on cases involving Trump, the resignations of attorneys who’ve refused to go along with bogus and/or politically motivated prosecutions, the more widespread resignations of more than a quarter of the DOJ’s career attorneys who refused to go along with the Trump agenda, the list goes on and on.
Indeed, just two days before Blanche testified, as a last straw, a federal judge handed down a ruling that found he had been involved in a “fraud against the court” in the Trump vs IRS slush fund case, with instructions that the ruling be sent to the New York Bar, which is already investigating him for professional misconduct.
Ordinarily, that would be the end of the nomination. At the very least it would raise massive doubts that would dominate the hearing, forcing even sympathetic senators to ask hard questions. But not this time. Not with Trump still calling the shots in the GOP. This time, a brief video released the next day proved far more significant because of its resonance in everyday people’s lives.
The video, released by the group World Without Exploitation, featured more than a dozen Epstein survivors calling on senators to reject Blanche’s nomination because of his role in disclosing their personal information, while protecting the names of alleged abusers after Congress forced the release of the Epstein Files.
“My name was released. … My phone number was released. … Where I went to school. … Where I live. … My students can now search me and read about my abuse,” the first five survivors said. “I am an Epstein survivor. … I am an Epstein survivor. … I am an Epstein survivor,” three more said. “We were exposed. … Nude pictures of victims were released. … Our family’s safety was put at risk,” three of them summarize.
“Now Todd Blanche wants to be the attorney general of the United States. … Todd Blanche had a duty to protect us. … Instead, he protected the people … who committed crimes against us,” they explain. “Thirty years … twelve hundred victims … and 6 million files … a mountain of evidence … but Todd Blanche says there are no investigative leads. … Todd Blanche failed us. … He failed victims everywhere. … We deserve better. … Our country deserves better. … Vote no on Todd Blanche for attorney general.”
While Blanche’s legal misconduct could get him in trouble with the New York bar, it’s not the sort of thing that most Americans who aren’t lawyers or political junkies care about. But rape is. And so is covering it up.
It’s not just that Blanche betrayed his duty to protect the Epstein survivors, as they pointed out. A new book, Regime Change, reveals that Blanche was involved in political strategy discussions with Vice President Vance and other top Trump advisors that were all about the best way to keep things hidden from the public. Epstein survivors were outraged last year when Blanche interviewed Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, after which she was moved to a minimum security facility that’s off-limits for sex-offenders under federal prison rules. “This move smacks of a cover up,” a group of them wrote at the time. We now know that Blanche didn’t just carry out this little cover-up, he actually came up with the idea he should interview Maxwell in the White House strategy sessions.
Still, with all that known, Blanche remained unmoved during his day of testimony. It was only on the second day, after Epstein survivor Dani Benski testified, that anything began to change.
Benski was accompanied by a band of other survivors, who rose up behind her as she began to speak, and held up pictures of themselves from their youths.
“We may look like grown adults when you see us now, but we were children, young girls at the time of our abuse. These are the photos of us when our innocence, dreams and lives were stolen,” Benski said, setting the tone for what was to follow.
“I’m a teacher. In my school, if a student released a nude photo depicting a peer’s sexual assault and abuse, they would almost certainly face expulsion. And yet, this is what our Department of Justice did to crime victims,” she said.
“Todd Blanche has been at the helm of the release of nude images of survivors, the outing of Jane Does, and the exposure of more than 100 victims’ identifying information and documents describing horrific acts of abuse, including my own,” she explained. “Instead of treating this release as its own violation and holding the man who led it accountable, you have a decision on whether you place him in the highest law enforcement position in this country.”
It wasn’t enough to make Tillis reject Blanche. He just wanted him to meet with survivors. And so, out of options, Blanche did.
“It had nothing to do with us and it had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so he can get a promotion,” survivor Liz Stein told MSNOW after the meeting.
“It was demoralizing, to say the least,” she explained. “He completely talked around questions, he didn’t give transparent answers. He didn’t give us any promises as far as following up investigative leads, he had no real answers for the Ghislaine Maxwell transfer, and no real explanation for the improper redactions.”
“He was just so dismissive,” Benski added in a later interview. “He really treated survivors as if we were the thorn in his side versus victims of crimes that have spanned five decades and that were revictimized by this Department of Justice.
In short, the meeting was a continuation of the Epstein coverup, intended to get Blanche’s nomination out of committee and onto the Senate floor. We will then get to see how many GOP senators willfully join in the coverup with their votes to confirm him.