Epstein survivor says Blanche meeting left her 'disappointed, disturbed and undaunted'

A meeting that only happened because Thom Tillis held a vote over the Justice Department's head is not exactly a profile in voluntary transparency. Todd Blanche didn't sit down with Epstein survivors because it was the right thing to do. He sat down with them because his confirmation depended on it. Jess Michaels noticed. "Disappointed, disturbed and undaunted" is not the language of someone who got what she came for.

That word "undaunted" is doing a lot of work here, and it should worry people in this administration who think the Epstein files can be managed rather than answered. These survivors have watched two administrations, multiple U.S. attorneys, and now an acting AG treat their case like a liability to be contained instead of a wrong to be corrected. They know pressure politics when they see it, because pressure politics is the only reason anyone in power has listened to them at all.

We supported this administration because we believed it when it said the rot in federal law enforcement needed to be exposed, not managed with better PR. Epstein is the test case. If Blanche's real strategy is polite meetings and vague reassurance until the confirmation vote clears, that's not accountability, that's stalling with better manners.

Tillis deserves credit for using actual leverage instead of issuing a statement. But leverage only works if someone keeps applying it after the vote. If this White House wants credibility with the people who trusted it to finally get this right, it can't let "disappointed and disturbed" become the final word from the women this case was always supposed to be about.