Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche finally met with some of the Epstein survivors after demands by Sen. Thom Tillis to meet with them, or don't expect his vote:
Sen. Thom Tillis said Thursday his vote to confirm attorney general nominee Todd Blanche is contingent on Blanche meeting with victims of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The North Carolina Republican’s new demand creates yet another hurdle for Blanche’s confirmation, which will fail to advance to the Senate floor if one Republican on the Judiciary Committee defects — assuming all Democrats on the panel oppose him. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is also undecided.
“I expect that meeting to occur before I’m willing to vote out of this committee and I’m trying to get to ‘yes,’ but this is a very important part of getting to ‘yes,’” Tillis, who is retiring at the end of the Congress, said at the second day of Blanche’s nomination hearings.
The meeting went about as badly as expected: Epstein Victims Slam “Demoralizing” Meeting With Todd Blanche:
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s meeting with several Epstein survivors was a major bust.
The Thursday meeting was an obvious gambit for Senate support for Blanche’s potential promotion to permanent attorney general. [...]
By 4 p.m., the meeting was a go, as several survivors were spotted filing into the Justice Department. Two hours later, however, they reappeared outside the building, looking “distraught and emotional,” according to MS NOW. Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, informed reporters outside the Justice Department: “I think we have a little ways to go here.”
“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,” Epstein victim and anti–human trafficking educator Elizabeth Stein told the network. “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,” she added.
More on the meeting from MS Now:
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.
Sadly, it looks like that was enough for the spineless Tillis to vote to confirm him.
I commend Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did: meet with the victims of Jeffery Epstein’s horrific crimes. I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) July 16, 2026
