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

CNN

By Hannah Rabinowitz, MJ Lee, Holmes Lybrand, Morgan Rimmer, 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.”

Early Thursday afternoon, Blanche, on the Hill meeting with senators, told reporters he’d be willing to meet with survivors, possibly later Thursday or “sometime soon.” He did not answer follow-up questions.

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.

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.

Since then, a Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee staffer has informed survivors that a meeting between Blanche and Epstein victims may in fact come together later on Thursday — though as of early afternoon, nothing has been confirmed.

The development has set off a scramble within the Epstein survivors community — some of whom had already left Washington, DC.

Some survivors have also called their respective lawyers to get advice on a potential Blanche meeting. If a meeting were to take place, some of the lawyers representing survivors are likely to join virtually given that many are not based in DC.

One concern among some of the Epstein survivors is 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. If only a small group can meet with the nominee Thursday, survivors are likely to ask him about a second meeting in the future.

“Survivors feel seen and heard today. They have been harmed by this DOJ and specifically by Todd Blanche,” said Lauren Hersh, co-founder of World Without Exploitation, a group that works closely with Epstein survivors.

Hersh added that survivors would also welcome the chance to meet with any Republican senators who have yet to make up their minds on supporting Blanche.

“We have requested meetings over and over and over again,” said Epstein survivor Liz Stein.

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 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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