Blanche’s Meeting With Epstein Victims Went as Well as You’d Expect

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s meeting with several Epstein survivors was a major bust.

The Thursday meeting was an obvious gambit for Senate support for Blanche’s potential promotion to permanent attorney general.

The encounter was arranged hours after Republican Senator Thom Tillis said that his vote for Blanche’s confirmation would be predicated on whether the acting attorney general met with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.

During the second day of Blanche’s committee confirmation hearing, Epstein victim Dani Bensky warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that Blanche had dodged her and other victims for months, yet showed a sudden willingness to talk shop once he needed them to advance his Senate confirmation.

By 4 p.m., the meeting was a go, as several survivors were spotted filing into the Justice Department. Two hours later, however, they reappeared outside the building, looking “distraught and emotional,” according to MS NOW. Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, informed reporters outside the Justice Department: “I think we have a little ways to go here.”

“It had absolutely nothing to do with us, and it had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion,” Epstein victim and anti–human trafficking educator Elizabeth Stein told the network. “I don’t think that we had high expectations going into this meeting. I certainly did not. But I didn’t expect to walk out of the meeting feeling the way that we feel right now.”

“It was demoralizing, to say the very least,” she added.

Stein recalled that Blanche was completely unwilling to provide the group with anything substantial, actively dodging questions and refusing to provide assurances that his department would follow up on potential investigative leads. She noted that he could not provide a concrete explanation for Ghislaine Maxwell’s cushy prison transfer to a low-security prison camp, and wouldn’t clarify the improper redactions rampant throughout the released Epstein files.

“It just felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns,” Stein continued. “We’re victims of the crime of sex trafficking. And the fact that our Department of Justice will not take that seriously is beyond concerning, not just to us, but should be concerning to Americans all across this country.”

Epstein survivor Annie Farmer told ABC News she is “even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States Attorney General” after finally meeting Blanche face to face.

“I found him abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors—a marked contrast to his public testimony during his confirmation hearing,” said Farmer, who served as a key witness for the government during Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial.

Tillis did not feel the same way: The North Carolina senator indicated over social media Thursday evening that he was satisfied by Blanche’s efforts.

“I commend Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did: meet with the victims of Jeffery Epstein’s horrific crimes,” Tillis wrote. “I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.”

Republicans in Congress are reportedly souring on Vice President JD Vance, feeling abandoned as he’s put media appearances before his duty to help resolve the intraparty strife bogging down the GOP’s agenda.

With midterms fast approaching and divisions in the ranks of a thin majority stymieing Republican legislative priorities, many in the party have hoped for Vance to step up, leveraging his position as president of the Senate to be a liaison between Congress and the White House.

Instead, “lawmakers can count on a few fingers the times … Vance has set foot in the Capitol,” Kimberley Ann Strassel writes in a reported column for The Wall Street Journal. The vice president has jilted members of Congress for podcasters and talk-show hosts, appearing on programs such as Real Time With Bill Maher and The View, in no small part to promote his new spiritual memoir.

Most recently, Vance flaked on a meeting scheduled Tuesday with House Republicans to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience.

And remarks Vance has made during his absence have only been salt in Republicans’ wounds. In his public comments, the vice president has been perceived as “bashing his own party to win praise from online influencers” and positioning himself as “scolder of the body over which he constitutionally presides, rather than showing up for the work,” Strassel writes.

In his recent media hits, for example, Vance has called those who oppose eliminating the filibuster as “married” to “weird Senate procedural bullshit,” and angered some conservatives by touting an interventionist “Christian” organization of the economy over laissez-faire economics.

One GOP senator told Strassel, “As we approach incredibly consequential midterms for this nation and this presidency, Senate Republicans are pretty confused as to why the president of the Senate is actively criticizing the GOP, while also being absent from his Senate duties.”

In the past, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has reportedly provided a line of communication between GOP lawmakers and the White House, but she’s now being treated for breast cancer. And while lawmakers reportedly “appreciate” appearances Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made on Capitol Hill, they have only made Vance’s “lack of interest” all the more clear.

President Trump’s wild claims of election fraud made in a speech to the nation Thursday night contradict the findings from the declassified documents his administration released.

In his 27-minute speech, Trump complained that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and accused China of stealing and hacking into voting data to prevent his victory, touting the newly declassified documents as evidence. Those documents didn’t support the claims he was making.

Much of the information in the more than 270 pages released presented information already known from 2020 and 2021, with the new details nowhere near earth-shattering. For example, China looked at ways to affect U.S. public opinion, downloading public voter rolls in multiple states (which are already easy to download or purchase). But that’s been known for years, and there was no proof China messed with any ballots or voting machines.

Another document from the Department of Homeland Security declared that over 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Nevada, California, and New Jersey, but did not include any supporting evidence. Officials in those states also pushed back against the claims.

A declassified 2021 U.S. intelligence report also contradicts Trump’s claim of foreign actors altering election results. That document found no proof that any overseas actor tried to, or succeeded in, changing “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential election, including ballots, voter registrations, results, or the counting process.

Trump cited two CIA documents to back up his claim of China’s election meddling, and posted them to the White House website. But again, those documents don’t support his words, and in some cases they say the opposite. One document, for example, said that Russia, China, Iran, and other countries were capable of interfering with voting and stealing sensitive information, but didn’t say that they actually engaged in those actions.

Trump only mentioned Russia in passing during his speech, but the declassified documents highlight Russian interference. The same document said that China wanted Trump to lose and tried to shift public opinion also warned that Russia was boosting the president’s campaign. Russia was singled out as the sole country trying to interfere in American election processes.

Russia also tried to amplify corruption stories about Hunter Biden and undermine faith in mail-in voting, much like Trump, the documents reveal.

What was the purpose of Trump’s speech? Much of the information presented was already known, and his comments about China aren’t even backed up by the evidence the White House itself provided. As recently as May, Trump praised China in a visit to the country, saying that the two countries would have a “fantastic future together.” It seems as though the president just wanted to undermine confidence in advance of elections that are forecasted to go badly for him.

Not even President Trump’s own election fraud guy could back up his claims that votes in the last three general and midterm elections were tampered with in any way.

“Can you acknowledge that there were no votes changed in 2020?” MS NOW’s Vaughn Hill asked John Solomon, an election interference conspiracy theorist who now sits on the White House’s election task force, after Trump’s speech Thursday night.

“All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows. I only know—the intelligence community has zero evidence that … a foreign power flipped the vote in 2020, ’22, or ’24,” Solomon replied.

“And you’re able to acknowledge that Venezuela has not tampered with voting machines in the United States?”

“No, the intelligence is very clear: They did it on their own machines,” Solomon said before fleeing the scene.

Trump used his prime-time speech to accuse China of “illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” He said that there was a “specific plot to do a big number in favor of the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela,” and that no vote would be safe and sound unless his restrictive SAVE America Act was passed. And yet Solomon, a MAGA journalist who has made a career out of manufacturing consent for Trump’s claims, couldn’t even back this one up a little bit.

That’s probably because Trump’s own intel doesn’t back it up. Alongside his speech, Trump declassified documents that confirmed Russia interfered in his favor by pushing claims about Hunter Biden and conspiracies about the reliability of mail-in voting.

The thin veil that has historically clouded government corruption is in the trash—under the current Trump administration, blatant ethical misconduct is in.

Truth Social executives announced Thursday that the company would sell Wall Street firms premier access to Donald Trump’s market-rattling online posts, granting traders an advantage over the general public with regard to anticipating stock market fluctuations due to the president’s social media habits.

The product, marketed as “Truth API,” apparently aims to make fast cash by sanitizing insider trading, an illegal activity that is actively investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Truth API is expected to provide continuous 24/7 coverage, as well as access to an archive of the president’s posts on the site dating back to 2022.

Truth Social is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group. Its board of directors is run by Boris Epshteyn—one of the president’s personal attorneys—and Donald Trump Jr., according to the company’s website.

“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” said Kevin McGurn, interim executive chief officer of Trump Media, in a statement. “As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.”

Yet it’s far from the first time that the Trump family has attempted to use its power and political prestige to milk money from the American public. Trump has made bank since reassuming office through stock trading, cryptocurrency, and even suing news media organizations. Before that, he had a long list of election-year hustles, including launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and a limited-edition, $60 God Bless the USA Bible co-promoted by “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood (a Bible that was ultimately forced on Oklahoma public schools by the state’s MAGA superintendent at the expense of local taxpayers).

Trump’s sons have joined in too. In April, Eric Trump openly bragged about winning a multimillion-dollar defense contract from his father’s administration. Donald Trump Jr. and his brother have also invested in multiple defense tech firms that either have or are seeking contracts with the Department of Defense.