By Rachel Foster
I was in the meeting on July 16 when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche finally met with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long abuse.
For nine months, these women had repeatedly requested a meeting with Blanche and were ignored. Only after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) made clear that Blanche’s confirmation depended on meeting with the survivors did Blanche scramble to arrange a hasty last-minute meeting. The survivors changed their travel plans and raced back to Capitol Hill after two exhausting days of advocacy meetings and Senate hearings. Their attorneys received so little notice that they barely had time to join by Zoom, much less prepare for what should have been a thoughtful and productive conversation.
Instead, the meeting became another chapter in a three-decade pattern of institutional failure.
Rather than listening, Blanche interrupted survivors, argued over tone and semantics, minimized decades of Justice Department failures and betrayal, and condescendingly dismissed the legitimate anger of women who have spent 30 years trying to be heard by the government institutions charged with protecting them. He offered no credible plan to investigate or prosecute anyone beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He instead, to the shock of everyone in the room, suggested they start over by filing reports with the FBI – reports that survivors had been filing since 1996. In doing so, he effectively admitted he had not even reviewed the Epstein files before meeting with the very women whose abuse those files document.
Most insultingly, he instructed survivors to “get to the point.”
Lara Blume McGee, an outspoken Epstein survivor, perfectly captured what everyone in the room was feeling:
“For months, we waited for a seat at that table. Months of silence while the man who claimed he couldn’t spare time for us sat for two days with Ghislaine Maxwell in a prison cell. Barely an hour for all of us where he spent the time interrupting us, quibbling over word choices, and telling women who survived the unimaginable to hurry up and ‘get to the point.’ We are the point. We have always been the point. Not a procedural obstacle to clear before a confirmation vote. Not a box to check so a nomination can move forward.”
She is exactly right.
Despite the survivors truly coming to this meeting in good faith, Blanche didn’t seem to intend to understand the survivors’ experiences or rebuild trust. It was a political exercise arranged to satisfy Tillis’s demand that he meet with the women before his confirmation vote. This essentially set this long-awaited meeting up as a performative act to check a box for Blanche to obtain his promotion, not to further the pursuit of justice or to acknowledge his clear failures and chart a course to instill even a modicum of trust in our Justice Department for these crime victims.
If Tillis genuinely cares about justice for these women, Blanche’s performance should deepen – not ease – his concerns. Rather than acknowledging decades of institutional failures or the extraordinary perseverance it has taken for these survivors simply to remain engaged with the justice system, Blanche treated the meeting like an obligation to be completed before moving on. His indifference was not simply disrespectful to the women in the room; it reflected a profound disregard for the responsibilities of the office he seeks to lead. Despite this being an opportunity for Blanche to work to heal the immense damage caused by the botched files release and to promise accountability going forward, we all – survivors, lawyers, and advocates – left feeling even more astonished and demoralized than an hour earlier.
Tillis and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) have long presented themselves as champions for survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence. But when Epstein survivors came to Capitol Hill asking to be heard about the mishandling of the files, missed investigative leads, and the continued absence of accountability, neither senator, after numerous efforts to schedule meetings, made time to sit down with them. It is impossible to claim to champion survivors while refusing to hear directly from them.
The Blanche meeting itself was clearly deeply disappointing. But the confirmation process made something broader – and more troubling – clear: too many senators seemed less interested in confronting Blanche’s failures than in finding a reason to move his nomination forward. Tillis has repeatedly said he is “trying to get to yes” on Blanche’s nomination.
The question is why? Blanche helped oversee a process that exposed survivors’ identifying information and nude images of young women – including teenagers. He participated in a White House Situation Room meeting where he helped manage the release of the files as a public relations crisis for the president. He does not plan to investigate or prosecute the people who enabled or participated in Epstein’s trafficking network, and he has said the Epstein matter should not be part of the DOJ’s work going forward.
After all of that, why would Tillis say he is still committed to finding a path to yes? At some point, “trying to get to yes” stops sounding like an open-minded review of the facts and starts sounding like a search for an excuse to overlook them. Will he allow the “meet with survivors” box to be checked despite the abhorrent tenor and direction of the meeting?
Epstein survivor and advocate Sharlene Rochard expressed what so many survivors continue to feel:
“I hope this moment serves as a reminder that accountability is not about politics. It’s about ensuring that our institutions are worthy of the public’s trust and that the people they are meant to serve are never treated as an afterthought. It feels like survivors always come last, especially with Todd Blanche.”
Regardless of what happens with Blanche’s nomination, these survivors are not going away. They will continue demanding the release of critical information, protection of survivors’ privacy, investigations into everyone who participated in or enabled Epstein’s trafficking network, and accountability from the officials who failed them.
World Without Exploitation has been honored to partner with these courageous women since we brought them together for the first time for a rally last September in Washington, D.C., helping ensure their voices are heard in the rooms where decisions are made and those in power are held accountable. But this work is only possible because people choose to stand with survivors. If you believe no survivor should have to fight the Justice Department alone, I hope you’ll join us because your support will help ensure survivors continue to have a critical seat at the table to demand the accountability they deserve.
There is enormous strength in collective and strategic advocacy, and this fight extends far beyond Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Survivors across the country are watching to see whether the Justice Department exists to protect all crime victims and pursue justice or whether it has become another institution that prioritizes politics over accountability.
That is what this confirmation vote is truly about.
The attorney general of the United States must be someone who treats survivors with dignity, follows the facts wherever they lead, and understands that justice cannot be subordinate to political fealty. Todd Blanche demonstrated in that meeting with survivors that he is not that person. Senators who believe in an independent Justice Department and who believe survivors deserve better than another generation of empty promises should vote no.
Rachel Foster is an attorney and co-founder and board chair of World Without Exploitation, the largest anti-trafficking coalition in the United States.
As I have said right from the beginning, although Cornyn and Tillis lost their political future, I am convinced they are getting a big payout from one or more of the billionaire "friends" for voting for Blanche.
Neither one of them ever spent even one second thinking about the TEM (Trump-Epstein-Maxwell) victims.
Blanche sold them a bill of goods, and NEVER inteneded anything substantial. He checked the boxes he needed for confirmation.