Key GOP senator says Todd Blanche needs to meet with Epstein victims before winning his support

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — A key Republican whose yes vote would be needed to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general said Thursday that Blanche needs to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein before he would be in favor of President Donald Trump’s choice.

Sen. Thom Tillis said that while he had a positive disposition toward Blanche, he has not made a final decision on the nomination.

“This is a very important part of getting to yes,” Tillis said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. “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.”

“Blanche was willing to say that he would meet with them and counsel, I understand the restriction that counsel has to be present,” Tillis said Thursday. “I expect that meeting to occur before I’m willing to vote out of this committee, and I’m trying to get to yes.”

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

A group of Epstein survivors have urged the Senate to reject Blanche’s nomination. One victim, Dani Bensky, testified against the acting attorney general on Thursday, with other survivors in the room standing with pictures of themselves at the age they were first abused.

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.

Both senators 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.

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 President Donald Trump won’t be able to interfere politically.

Thursday hearing

For Thursday’s 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 on the committee 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.

“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.

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