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Some Epstein survivors say acting Attorney General Todd Blanche “gaslit” them in a sit-down he agreed to only after a Republican senator made it a condition of advancing his nomination.

Getting into it: The meeting, held Thursday at Justice Department headquarters, ran about an hour and came together only after Sen. Thom Tillis said that morning he wouldn’t vote to advance the nomination until it happened, calling it “a very important part of getting to yes.” Sitting in alongside Blanche were senior DOJ officials, FBI agents, and a prosecutor who focuses on sex trafficking, with a few of the survivors’ attorneys joining remotely. An earlier attempt that day fell apart when no survivors turned up, leaving Blanche and his team waiting in a Senate Judiciary Committee office for roughly half an hour.

Survivors who attended described it as a joke. “It felt like we were hitting a brick wall when we were trying to talk with him about, but what about this? But why can’t you look at that?” said Jess Michaels. “You know, we were giving him information that he could have talked with us about, but we were gaslit, we were skipped over.” She said Blanche took the meeting “because he wants this promotion” and that “his attempt at empathy and compassion really came off as patronizing and condescending.”

Dani Bensky, who testified against the nomination before the Judiciary Committee, said Blanche “treated the meeting as a mere ‘check-the-box’ exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation,” adding that “he danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust.”

Annie Farmer said she found him “abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors…. a marked contrast to his public testimony during his confirmation hearing,” and said he wouldn’t commit to investigating why her sister Maria Farmer’s 1996 report to the FBI about Epstein was ignored. That report is believed to be the first time federal law enforcement was told Epstein was abusing kids.

Elizabeth Stein called the meeting “demoralizing,” saying “it had absolutely nothing to do with us. It had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion.” Amanda Roberts, sister-in-law of the late Virginia Giuffre, said of the meeting, “it felt like he only had it because his hand was forced.”

Blanche gave a mixed account. “It wasn’t all cordial,” he told reporters, adding that there was “necessarily frustration” but “there wasn’t any shouting.” He acknowledged the core problem head-on: “There’s something that they want that I don’t think I can give them, which is some form of justice. And I want to be able to give justice in the form of prosecutions, and maybe we can do a prosecution at some point. I don’t know.”

He said he mostly listened, that survivors brought no new information, and that he encouraged them to bring anything they had to the FBI. A DOJ spokesperson called it a “productive, initial discussion” and said Blanche “answered questions and walked through what is needed for investigations to proceed.”