Todd Blanche holds tense meeting with Epstein survivors after key GOP senator’s ultimatum

By Hannah Rabinowitz, MJ Lee, CNN

(CNN) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and survivors of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein held a tense meeting Thursday afternoon as he attempts to shore up support for his nomination as attorney general.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican whose yes vote would be needed to advance Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, had said the meeting was needed before he would vote in favor of President Donald Trump’s choice.

Neither side came away fully satisfied after the meeting.

“It wasn’t all cordial, because there’s something that they want that I don’t think I can give them, which is some form of justice,” Blanche told CNN after the conversation, which lasted a little more than an hour at the Justice Department.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring who died by suicide in 2025, said on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that the meeting with Blanche featured a lot of diversions.

“There were no real admissions. There were no real commitments being made,” said Giuffre’s sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts. “There was just a lot of circles, and it felt very deflating.”

In response to Blanche’s characterization of the Thursday meeting, Roberts said they walked in very dissatisfied with him and made clear their opposition to his nomination.

“We’ve been asking for this meeting, and it felt like he only had it because his hand was forced,” Roberts added.

“The meeting was disappointing, clearly to check a box and Mr. Blanche would not commit to anything to help the survivors,” Jennifer Plotkin, a lawyer who represents Epstein survivors and attended the meeting virtually, told CNN.

Blanche said after the meeting that he encouraged the survivors to give the FBI any information that could help investigators and said he’d meet will the survivors again.

But Epstein survivor Dani Bensky, who had testified earlier Thursday on Capitol Hill, said that message wasn’t enough.

Survivors felt frustrated, according to Bensky, in no small part because they felt they were being told by Blanche repeatedly that they would need to report their crimes all over again to the FBI and provide corroboration.

“He danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust,” Bensky said in a statement, urging senators to vote against Blanche.

Tillis’ demand with nomination in flux

The fate of Blanche’s nomination in the Judiciary Committee hinges on two Republican senators with nothing to lose: Tillis, of North Carolina, and Texas’ John Cornyn. Cornyn recently lost the Republican primary in his state to a Trump-backed rival, while Tillis announced last year that he would not seek reelection.

“This is a very important part of getting to yes,” Tillis said of a Blanche meeting with Epstein survivors during a Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday morning.

“I expect that meeting to occur before I’m willing to vote out of this committee, and I’m trying to get to yes,” said the North Carolina Republican, who has been a Trump critic at times.

Tillis commended Blanche afterwards on social media for holding the meeting but did not immediately say if his vote was determined.

Blanche fielded hours of questions from the Senate panel on Wednesday, acknowledging there were some errors in the department’s vetting of the Epstein files, but defending his handling of the case.

Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother, told CNN that there was not a sense of compassion from Blanche, but expressed gratitude toward Tillis for making the meeting happen.

“What Senator Tillis would have wanted from that was more substance,” Roberts said, defining substance as an investigation or an understanding of next steps. “I can tell you wholeheartedly … that we didn’t leave that meeting feeling that way.”

Tillis and Cornyn have also been among the sharpest Republican critics of the Justice Department’s earlier proposal of a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which Blanche has said is “dead.”

Cornyn told CNN on Thursday that after Blanche’s testimony, he thinks the fund “still can be revived.”

“I think what I confirmed is that the weaponization fund is, still can be revived, and so this idea that it’s somehow gone is just not true, in my opinion,” said Cornyn.

Tillis said he needs to see a “work product” that ensures it won’t come up again.

“There are very specific, measurable work products — not a wink and a nod and a handshake, but definable, ratified, executed agreements that will make me feel comfortable that this turkey of an idea is dead,” the senator told CNN.

The acting attorney general had to tread carefully before the panel — reassuring Republicans that he would keep up his aggressive approach at the Justice Department, while also signaling that Trump won’t be able to interfere politically.

Sudden DOJ scramble to meet

Moments after Tillis said that Blanche must meet with Epstein survivors, a Justice Department official approached Bensky with an offer.

Bensky was told that Alessandra Serano, the national coordinator for child exploitation and human trafficking, would be able to meet with Epstein survivors that day, she told CNN.

That offer was rejected, Bensky said, as she and other survivors insisted any meeting must be with Blanche himself — just as Tillis had requested.

The development of a possible meeting with Blanche himself set off a scramble within the Epstein survivors community — some of whom had already left Washington, DC.

One concern among some of the Epstein survivors was that a sizable contingent of them gets the opportunity to meet with Blanche — particularly if a meeting Thursday ends up being their only opportunity to do so.

Blanche on Wednesday defended DOJ’s efforts to release the Epstein files, saying that while there were some redaction issues among the roughly 3 million files produced, those were addressed and corrected.

“They took pains to apply appropriate redactions, there were mistakes that were made, and so approximately 1% of the redactions had to be fixed after we released the Epstein files,” Blanche said. “That doesn’t excuse the mistakes of which I take responsibility, but it does mean that we tried to fix them.”

Epstein victims, including Bensky on Thursday, have said those redactions came far too late after their personal information was shared with the public.

Thursday hearing

For Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, Republicans put forth former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served under President George W. Bush; Jon Adler, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation; and Jennifer Bos, the mother of an Illinois woman whose body was allegedly abused by an undocumented immigrant.

Democrats called Elizabeth Oyer, who had served as a career pardon lawyer at DOJ before being fired by Blanche last year. Oyer, who sued over her ousting, claimed she was terminated because she refused to bow to pressure from Trump appointees who wanted her to restore the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, which he lost after a 2011 state domestic violence conviction.

Republican senators challenged Oyer on whether she recommended the pardons or commutations of several violent criminals, including mass shooters Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers, to the Biden White House. While Oyer said that her conversations with the White House were covered by executive privilege, she said that all the criminals listed were taken off death row but will remain in high-security prisons for their full sentence.

“I’m not going to comment on the recommendations that I made, but I can tell you that Mr. Roof is going to die in prison,” Oyer said in an exchange with Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican.

“He’s going to live in prison for a very long time, because of you,” Hawley said.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Nicky Robertson, Morgan Rimmer, Aleena Fayaz, Holmes Lybrand, Devan Cole and Abigail Roedersheimer contributed to this report.

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