A survivor of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein blasted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for refusing to provide victims with any concrete answers during a “demoralizing” meeting that seemed solely aimed at earning Blanche a promotion.
During Blanche’s Senate confirmation hearings this week, Republican Thom Tillis told President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and top choice to permanently lead the Department of Justice that the only way to earn his vote would be to meet with Epstein’s victims.
Survivor Dani Bensky told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday that Blanche had been ignoring her and the other victims for the past eight months, but he quickly agreed to meet with them once his Senate confirmation was on the line.
That meeting, however, failed to live up to the women’s already low expectations, survivor Liz Stein told the hosts of MS NOW’s The Weeknight.
“It had absolutely nothing to do with us, and it had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion,” she said. “I don’t think that we had high expectations going into this meeting. I certainly did not. But I didn’t expect to walk out of the meeting feeling the way that we feel right now. It was demoralizing, to say the very least.”
The survivors would have been happy with pretty much anything Blanche had to offer them, but he refused to give them anything concrete, she added.
“He completely talked around questions,” Stein said. “He didn’t give transparent answers. He didn’t give us any promises as far as following up on investigative leads. He had no real answers for the Ghislaine Maxwell transfer and no real explanation for the improper redactions.”
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping lure, manipulate, and groom young girls for Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
After meeting with Blanche last summer, she was moved from the low-security Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee in Florida to the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, a dorm-style facility with a study, game room, and arts and crafts classes that is typically not available to sex offenders.
During this week’s meeting with survivors, Blanche did say he would meet with the women again if they first went to the FBI—something they’ve already been doing for the past 30 years, Stein said.
“It just felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns,” she added. “We’re victims of the crime of sex trafficking. And the fact that our Department of Justice will not take that seriously is beyond concerning not just to us, but should be concerning to Americans all across this country.”
In a statement, the DOJ told the Daily Beast that Thursday’s meeting had been a “productive, initial discussion” involving Blanche, senior DOJ officials, FBI special agents, and victim services representatives.
“Acting AG Blanche answered questions and walked through what is needed for investigations to proceed,” the statement said. “While some victims said that they had not reached out to the FBI under this administration, he encouraged victims to meet with FBI investigators as the next step, and attendees spoke with agents after the meeting about scheduling interviews.”
The department also said it was “determined to bring justice for all victims of human trafficking and sex crimes.”
Stein, however, also ripped into Blanche for meeting with other top Trump administration officials in the Situation Room last year to try to contain the MAGA civil war that erupted when the FBI and DOJ announced that the government’s investigative files would not be released.
Congress eventually voted to force the DOJ to publish the files, but in the meantime, Blanche suggested he meet with Maxwell and hatched a plan to offer an empty gesture of transparency designed to calm Trump’s base, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed in their book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
The incident was yet another case of the administration treating Epstein’s crimes as a “reputational problem” instead of prosecuting more of his associates, Stein said.
“Usually, the situation room is reserved for acts of war, natural disasters,” she said. “Yet they were in there discussing the Epstein files. And it just makes you pause and wonder why.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump and Epstein were close friends for more than a decade, and Trump’s name appears in the files thousands of times. The president has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes or being involved in any wrongdoing.
