More than two dozen accusers of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sent an open letter Tuesday to Republican Sens. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and John Cornyn (Texas) urging them not to confirm acting attorney general Todd Blanche to lead the Justice Department permanently.
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Without Tillis and Cornyn’s support, Blanche’s nomination cannot advance out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tillis said last week that Blanche needed to meet with Epstein’s accusers before he would advance his nomination. That meeting took place Thursday.
According to the letter, obtained by The Washington Post, accusers grilled Blanche during the meeting over the Justice Department’s failure to redact survivors’ names and identifying information from its Epstein files, while names of alleged abusers and enablers remained hidden.
“Survivors received an hour of deflection, interruption and gaslighting,” the letter stated. “Todd Blanche showed no remorse. … He also gave no indication that he believed there were investigative leads worth pursuing, or that he intended to seek accountability beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
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The accusers slammed the meeting as “a box-checking exercise” and equated a vote to confirm Blanche as a vote against survivors of human trafficking and sexual assault.
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