By admin 
When a group of women who identify as survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse found out that they could finally meet with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, they hatched a plan.
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They prepared for a tense but businesslike meeting where they’d tell the Justice Department to pursue new leads on Epstein’s associates and confront the government on disclosing their identities when it published batches of investigative files.
“What we were met with was, when I recall it in my brain, jaw-dropping to me,” said Liz Stein, a 53-year-old human trafficking specialist from Philadelphia who says Epstein abused her. “We walked out of there feeling emotionally exhausted and really dehumanized.”
In exclusive interviews with USA TODAY, three of the women in the meeting said that Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, was combative and dismissive. And after they pressed him about whether he was familiar with the documents the Justice Department released, they all came to the same conclusion: Todd Blanche hadn’t read the Epstein files.
The women’s comments come as Blanche’s nomination hangs in the balance due to unrelated concerns about him. Sens. Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, two Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, have stalled his nomination as they fight with Trump over the terms of a controversial settlement deal with the IRS. A vote to confirm Blanche to the top job has been postponed.
Tillis told Blanche on July 16 that he would only vote to confirm him if Blanche met with Epstein’s accusers, a request that came minutes after Dani Bensky testified that she and other Epstein survivors had been trying fruitlessly for a face-to-face with him. The DOJ announced the same day that Blanche would meet with them.
USA TODAY reached out to the Justice Department multiple times regarding details of the July 16 meeting. The Justice Department referred USA TODAY to a statement by Alessandra Serano, the trafficking and child exploitation coordinator.
Serano said that Blanche attempted to address all of the women’s questions and that “the Justice Department is determined to bring justice for all victims of human trafficking and sex crimes.”
Here’s what we know about how the meeting went.
‘Acting like a defense attorney’
Bensky, a teacher from Hawaii, said that the day she met with Blanche, July 16, was already intense because she also testified against him at his confirmation hearing. She said someone from the Justice Department first offered her a staff meeting. Later, she said they offered a meeting with Blanche.
Bensky said she and a handful of other Epstein survivors who live all over the country attended. So did family members of the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the most outspoken and well-known Epstein survivor. She said Blanche brought Serano, other staffers, and another man from the FBI. She said the women’s lawyers joined via a video call.
Bensky said Blanche responded to the women’s questions with defensive, semantic arguments and did not commit to investigating any of the leads they provided about Epstein associates. She said the tone of the meeting came across as Blanche asking the women to get to their point.
“I feel like he was acting like a defense attorney,” Bensky said of Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer in multiple criminal cases. “That is at the core of what survivors have been feeling is that he will always protect his own and the administration’s reputational harm.”
Serano, from the DOJ, said in a statement that Blanche was “direct with survivors about how the criminal investigation process works and what was required to build and pursue a criminal case,” including meeting with an FBI agent.
Serano said there were FBI agents in the room ready to follow up with them on their cases, and “every survivor in attendance was given direct contact information for a senior DOJ leader.”
Lara Blume McGee, 47, of Arkansas, another survivor who was in the room, said these women have already gone to the FBI to report Epstein’s conduct. She referenced Maria Farmer’s 1996 complaint to the FBI alleging that Epstein moved child sexual abuse material from Ohio to New York.
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She said Blanche effectively disregarded what they already did.
“He told us to go back to the FBI and start all over again,” McGee said.
Has Todd Blanche read the Epstein files?
Both Bensky and McGee described an exchange in which members of the group asked Blanche whether he had read the Epstein files. They both interpreted his answers to indicate that he had never read any of the documents the department he runs published in an online database.
In his former post as deputy attorney general, Blanche oversaw the release of more than 3 million files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Some of the women who say naked pictures of them were released in the documents have gone to court to get those records taken down.
Bensky said that when the group first asked Blanche whether he had read the Epstein files, he “basically put it back on us,” referencing the massive volume of files and implying it was too extensive to read in full. “We (then) asked, ‘Have you read any of them?’”
Bensky said Blanche didn’t give a clear response, but instead pivoted. She said that their questions gave him the opportunity to say he had read some of the files or searched through them.
USA TODAY asked a press representative whether Blanche had read the Epstein files and did not receive an immediate response to that inquiry or to a follow-up inquiry.
Some of the women characterized Blanche as insensitive about the situation.
“There’s crimes in those files that need to be investigated, and they just haven’t done their job,” McGee said. “He’s not taking it seriously.”
Stein said her name was exposed in a document released among the Epstein files that specifically identified her as a victim. She also does not think Blanche read the files.
“People who were laying eyes on them were only laying eyes on them to make redactions and not look at any investigative leads, and that feels like an enormous waste of time and manpower,” Stein said.
“If it was their only job to do redactions, they failed to do them properly,” she said.
‘The right side of history’
The women in the group are universally opposed to Blanche being confirmed as attorney general. If all Democrats on the Senate Judiciary vote “no,” and two Republicans join them, his nomination could be doomed.
If his nomination makes it to the Senate floor, and all Democrats vote against the nomination, a handful of Republican senators could also block his nomination. That’s what Epstein’s accusers are hoping happens. But it’s not yet clear whether the vote would happen before 2027.
“Trump is going to be Trump and do what he feels like has to be done, but I do believe that the Republican Party will have some courage,” McGee said. “We’ve been meeting with parties on both sides … and they’re going to stand on the right side of history.”
Stein said they may request another meeting with the Justice Department, because she wants to remain open to working with them in good faith. But she said she wouldn’t participate in “performative” meetings ever again.
“Just because Todd Blanche doesn’t want to work with us, that’s – I’m sorry, but that’s not going to stop us,” she said.
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Contributing: Aysha Bagchi
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect