His behavior in a hastily arranged meeting with brave women seeking justice underscored his unsuitability for the attorney general role he desperately wants.
Rather than listening, Blanche interrupted survivors, argued over tone and semantics, minimized decades of Justice Department failures and betrayal, and condescendingly dismissed the legitimate anger of women who have spent 30 years trying to be heard by the government institutions charged with protecting them. He offered no credible plan to investigate or prosecute anyone beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He instead, to the shock of everyone in the room, suggested they start over by filing reports with the FBI – reports that survivors had been filing since 1996. In doing so, he effectively admitted he had not even reviewed the Epstein files before meeting with the very women whose abuse those files document.
Most insultingly, he instructed survivors to “get to the point.”
Lara Blume McGee, an outspoken Epstein survivor, perfectly captured what everyone in the room was feeling:
“For months, we waited for a seat at that table. Months of silence while the man who claimed he couldn’t spare time for us sat for two days with Ghislaine Maxwell in a prison cell. Barely an hour for all of us where he spent the time interrupting us, quibbling over word choices, and telling women who survived the unimaginable to hurry up and ‘get to the point.’ We are the point. We have always been the point. Not a procedural obstacle to clear before a confirmation vote. Not a box to check so a nomination can move forward.”
