Epstein survivors call on Tillis, Cornyn to block Blanche nomination

Todd Blanche's problem isn't just that he defended Donald Trump in court. It's that Epstein's actual victims, women who spent years fighting to get anyone in power to take their case seriously, are now standing outside Tillis and Cornyn's offices asking them not to hand the Justice Department to a guy they don't trust to finish the job on Epstein's remaining co-conspirators. That's not a talking point cooked up by cable news. That's people who lived through the thing itself, saying they're worried.

We've said for years that the Epstein case was handled like a hot potato by both parties, passed along, buried, litigated into oblivion. So when the women at the center of it raise their hands and say "not this guy," Republican senators owe them more than a form letter. Tillis and Cornyn don't have to agree with the ask. But they do have to explain, on the record, why a nominee whose résumé is built on defending the president personally is the right man to run an agency that may still have Epstein-related loose ends to tie up.

None of this means Blanche is guilty of anything or that his confirmation is doomed. Plenty of AG nominees have had prior client relationships with presidents and turned out fine in the job. But this isn't a hypothetical conflict of interest, it's a specific one, tied to a specific case, raised by specific women who have earned the right to be heard by the people who are about to vote. If Republicans want to be the party that actually follows through on justice for Epstein's victims, the least they can do is sit in a room with them before casting that vote, not after.