Todd Blanche meeting leaves Epstein survivors stunned and angry

On Thursday morning, during the second day of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., dropped an unexpected ultimatum: While he acknowledged he was leaning toward supporting Blanche, he expected him to meet with Epstein survivors before he would be willing to vote for him in the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

That vote is expected to happen on July 30, according to a committee source.

“There should not be any reason why, based on what Mr. Blanche said yesterday, if he said that he would do it today, then he can certainly do it over the next two weeks,” said Tillis. 

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.

MS NOW has since learned more about the meeting through conversations with one meeting attendee and a representative of two other attendees. Both spoke to MS NOW on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution against them or other survivors. 

MS NOW also reached out to the Justice Department and to Blanche. The DOJ did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

According to the representative, survivors were nervous but hopeful at the beginning. Blanche attended the meeting with Alessandra Serano, the newly appointed national coordinator for child exploitation and trafficking, alongside other DOJ and FBI personnel. And he even whispered to Sky Roberts, the brother of late Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, that he empathized with him because Blanche had lost his sister too.

But then, according to the representative, Blanche told the participants, “I’m not asking you guys to commit to anything today, and I don’t expect that I have to commit to anything, too.” 

Blanche insisted he personally was powerless to open an investigation, pointing instead to other individuals around the room as people who can.

The attendee who spoke to MS NOW said Blanche maintained, “The FBI has the power to open investigations, not me.” 

“I’m just the attorney general,” Blanche added, according to the representative.

Some participants nonetheless strove to find common ground. Roberts asked Blanche, “What do you need from us to help you open an investigation?”

Blanche replied, “I need testimony and evidence,” stunning the room, according to the representative.  

“He was standing in a room full of people who have given testimony over many decades,” they said. 

Roberts reminded Blanche that they had such testimony from his sister. The Epstein files released by the Justice Department include multiple sworn statements from Giuffre, including her civil depositions in the defamation case brought against her by Harvard Law professor and Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz and in her own case against Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator. The files also contain FBI memoranda memorializing law enforcement interviews with Giuffre dating back to 2011.

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Roberts then asked Blanche about investigating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, whom Giuffre accused of rape.

Both people who spoke to MS NOW said Blanche insisted he could not investigate the former prince because he “won’t cooperate with us,” and “Virginia’s not here.” Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied any misconduct in relation to Giuffre.

The attendee told MS NOW, “That is just not true. Prosecutors can build an evidence-based case.”

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One possible source of evidence is Giuffre’s book and related materials. In October 2025, after Giuffre’s death, her memoir “Nobody’s Girl” was published, ultimately reaching No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. In March of this year, Giuffre’s co-author, Amy Wallace, told The Guardian that during the writing process, she understood “precision was protection.” As a result, she recorded interviews with Giuffre and subsequently moved her audio files to a secure location. 

Federal law enforcement has not reached out to Wallace, according to a spokesperson for Giuffre’s family.

At another point in the meeting, Blanche told those assembled that there was “very little corroboration” for the charges against Maxwell, according to the attendee.

That is “patently false,” the attendee said, citing the testimony of the four women who publicly testified against Maxwell at her 2021 trial. 

Blanche also seemed unaware, according to the attendee, that Annie Farmer, one of those witnesses, was among the meeting participants. Farmer specifically testified that Maxwell had sexually assaulted her, an account corroborated by her then-boyfriend and mother, both of whom also testified at Maxwell’s trial.

In a prepared statement shared with MS NOW, Farmer said, “While quick to point to the failures of previous administrations, he refused to take accountability for mistakes made under his own leadership. Specifically, he would not commit to an inquiry into why my sister Maria Farmer’s 1996 report went uninvestigated; he refused to release documents related to internal discussions about charging Epstein that would provide important clarification about previous errors, and his explanations for his nine-hour interview with Ghislaine Maxwell and her subsequent transfer to a less secure facility were wholly dissatisfactory and contrived.”

Asked whether Blanche’s statements caused any of the survivors to become emotional during the meeting, the representative said Bensky “completely broke down.”

Blanche did not react, the representative noted.

At one point, Blanche told the attendees that 800 people at DOJ — some, but not all, of whom are lawyers — were involved in reviewing the Epstein files. But when asked whether they are still investigating, Blanche responded, “We can’t talk about that,” the attendee said.

And according to the attendee, after Blanche left, a female DOJ official explained that reviewers were only trying to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act by looking for material to redact, not to gather investigative leads.

On Friday morning, a DOJ spokesperson provided a statement to CNBC, saying that Blanche was accompanied by “senior DOJ officials, FBI special agents, and victim services representatives” and had “a productive, initial discussion” with survivors.

The spokesperson added that at Blanche’s encouragement, some attendees spoke with FBI agents after the meeting about scheduling interviews. The statement continued, “The Justice Department is determined to bring justice for all victims of human trafficking and sex crimes.” 

But the representative remained unconvinced: “That was not a meeting, that was a performance.”

The attendee agreed, saying of Blanche, “He was dismissive to survivors — so insensitive, so hurtful. That’s not someone who should be the top law enforcement person in the country.”

Lisa Rubin

Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.