00:00We have never been approached by anybody on the prosecutorial side of things.
00:06So I do think like sitting down, telling our stories and explaining like the people that
00:12were in the room, right?
00:13We were witnesses of crimes.
00:14We had crimes committed to us directly.
00:17We do have a lot of information.
00:19He had said that immediately when things were misredacted, that they were taken down and
00:24they fixed them and within 24 hours they were put back up.
00:27That is entirely not true.
00:29There are still things that need to be redacted and there's still survivor information in
00:33there even today.
00:35As a continuation of the confirmation process for Mr. Blanche, we are here to determine whether
00:43or not Mr. Blanche, who continues to be President Trump's lawyer and all that that implies, should
00:52be the Attorney General of the United States of America who is supposed to be defending
00:57the Constitution, not the President.
01:01Ms. Benske, thank you so much for being here and for all of the other Epstein victims.
01:08Mr. Blanche was asked whether he would meet with you because we knew that he had refused,
01:17basically, to meet with the victims of the Epstein crimes.
01:21And he offered, apparently, yesterday, and he made some excuses about it not being appropriate
01:27for him to meet with the victims directly.
01:30Why, I do not know.
01:32But he offered up a staff person, and I understand that a staff person from his office contacted
01:40you, you and others, and offered to meet with your counsel.
01:46Is that correct?
01:48Not with you directly.
01:49I am not aware of a staffer reaching out.
01:51We, I don't, I can ask, but we have not heard from a staffer.
01:56No, we have not heard from a staffer in the last couple of years.
01:58Okay, let's get that clarified.
02:01But I, did I misunderstand that, in fact, yesterday, when he said, I have a staff person here, and
02:08we can get this done today.
02:10Yeah.
02:11That they did, they have not contacted you.
02:13They have not contacted us now.
02:15He also said that it would not be appropriate for him to meet directly with you.
02:19So, not only is his staff not, have they not contacted you, as he indicated yesterday, that
02:28this could all happen yesterday.
02:31He continues to make excuses, as far as I can tell, for not meeting with you, in spite
02:36of the fact that he met for hours with Ms. Maxwell.
02:40Why is it so important?
02:42Can you tell us, once again, why is it so important for you to, you and all the other
02:49victims of abstinence crimes, to meet with the, with Mr. Blanche, personally?
02:55Yeah, thank you for the question.
02:56I think that if a victim comes and reports a crime in the FBI, what is the first thing
03:04that they do?
03:04They follow up.
03:05Like, Law and Order SVU taught me that when I was 15 years old.
03:10The DOJ has never followed up in 30 years with any of us.
03:13There is a lot in the files right now that you should be investigating and looking into.
03:19Um, and to my knowledge, I mean, they can ask, they can answer this too, but, um, we have
03:27never been approached by anybody on the prosecutorial side of, of things.
03:32So, I do think, like, sitting down, telling our stories and explaining, like, the people
03:38that were in the room, right?
03:39We were witnesses of crimes.
03:41We had crimes committed to us directly.
03:43We do have a lot of information and you would think that, um, somebody would take that lead
03:50that's already in, like, we already went to the FBI because that we wouldn't have 302s
03:55if we hadn't have gone to the FBI.
03:56It's already there, right?
03:57So, the following up of those 302s, um, and then once the, once it's supposed to be handled
04:05by the Department of Justice, why aren't we hearing from prosecutors?
04:08This case was never handled correctly from the beginning.
04:12And he also made some excuses as to why personal information, uh, were, uh, was not, uh, redacted
04:21and, uh, exposing many of you, including you and I.
04:25Yeah, um, I think something that stood out yesterday was that he had said that immediately
04:29when things were misredacted, that they were taken down and they fixed them and within 24
04:35hours they were put back up.
04:36That is entirely not true.
04:37There are still things, um, that need to be redacted and there's still survivor information
04:42in there even today from my awareness, um, that, I mean, my information just came down
04:47in April, um, and that was after begging.
04:49Would you say that Mr. Blanche exhibits a rather dismissive attitude toward all of you and the
04:57Epstein crimes?
04:591,000%, yes.
05:01Ms. Oyer, uh, Trump's DOJ under Todd Blanche leadership has purged career prosecutors for
05:10personal reasons for refusing to prioritize President Trump's interests over their constitutional
05:16oath.
05:17Todd Blanche has fired more than 1,200 former career DOJ employees who worked for both Republican
05:25and Democratic administrations.
05:27Uh, this doesn't even include all of the, uh, DOJ attorneys who resigned because they didn't
05:34want to be part of the kind of DOJ that Todd Blanche is creating, which is basically not a
05:42Department of Justice, but a Department of Retribution and Corruption in my view.
05:48Ms. Oyer, what risks does this pose to our country for the kind of DOJ that, uh, Todd Blanche is
05:57running?
05:59Senator, one of DOJ's greatest strengths historically has been its nonpolitical career workforce of experts,
06:06people who are experts in their subject matter. That is crucial to keeping all of us safe. We need people
06:12who have
06:12specialization in things like national security, prosecuting child exploitation, all manner of
06:18sophisticated crimes involving cryptocurrency. Mr. Blanche has decimated the expertise of the career
06:24workforce. The Justice Department has lost over a quarter of its attorneys under his leadership
06:29and has not been able to replace them, certainly not with experienced, knowledgeable, nonpolitical
06:35people.
06:36I think the DOJ is very much losing its credibility. And as, uh, Mr. Ashcroft mentioned, the credibility
06:44and trust in DOJ is very important. The rule of law is very important. We have a president who does
06:49not believe the rule of law applies to him and his, uh, attorney, Mr. Blanche is helping him, helping the
06:57president, uh, proceed with his basically anti rule of law agenda. First, I'd like to thank you all and thank
07:04you to the committee for hearing survivor voices. I'd like to remind you of who you're hearing from
07:10today. At this time, can my survivor sisters and family please rise? We may look like grown adults
07:19when you see us now, but we were children, young girls at the time of our abuse. These are the
07:25photos
07:26of when our innocence, dreams, and lives were stolen. Please take these faces in as you think of us as
07:32your own family, daughters, nieces, sisters. Now look at our faces and remember the women and families
07:39of the, of who the DOJ re-victimized. You guys can sit. Thank you so much.
07:46I'm a teacher. In my school, if a student released a nude photo depicting a peer's sexual assault and
07:53abuse, they would almost certainly face expulsion. And yet, this is what our Department of Justice did
07:59to crime victims. Today, Todd Blanche, well, Todd Blanche has been at the helm of the release of nude
08:06images of survivors, the outing of Jane Doe's, and the exposure of more than 100 victims identifying
08:13information and documents describing horrific acts of abuse, including my own. Instead of treating this
08:21release as its own violation and holding the man who led it accountable, you have a decision
08:28on whether you place him in the highest law enforcement position in this country.
08:36In December, before the document release, our attorneys submitted 350 victims' names to the
08:42Department of Justice as victims' names to be redacted prior to the release. In that first release,
08:49I found my name in two places. In that next release, in January, my name appeared again,
08:54but this time the redactions were so far worse. The files displayed not only my name, but my phone
09:00number, my former addresses, where I worked, and other identifying information. When my name appeared
09:07in the third file release, it became difficult to believe that this was not intentional. Despite my
09:13lawyer repeatedly contacting the DOJ seeking protection, my information continued to be exposed.
09:21And it's not just my name. It's the identifying information. These documents contain disturbing,
09:27yet incomplete, accounts of my abuse. They were available not only for the entire world to see,
09:32but my child, my students, my friends, my employers, my colleagues, and my family. It was humiliating.
09:40Worse, my FBI 302 exposed a Jane Doe who had fought for decades to conceal her identity. It's been
09:49absolutely devastating. Outing survivors causes real and irrevocable harm. While coping with our
09:58emotional distress and psychological trauma, we also have lost our privacy and confidentiality,
10:05suffered reputational harm, lost jobs, and now fear for our personal safety. We are not activists.
10:14We are crime victims. For us, this has never been about politics. It has been about getting justice for
10:22the crimes committed against us. And the redactions are not the only problem with Todd Blanche's nomination.
10:28Todd Blanche has never attempted to listen to us, the crime victims. Survivors in this room repeatedly
10:34asked to meet with Todd Blanche through multiple channels. He never responded. Yesterday, he said he
10:41would meet with us with our attorneys if they were present. But let's be clear, that was the first time
10:46that that was ever communicated to us before yesterday. He simply ignored us for the last eight months.
10:53He has been radio silent and the silence was deafening. Crime victims deserve better from
11:00the nation's highest level of law enforcement officials. We deserve to be heard directly, not
11:06dismissed and ignored. There are numerous investigative leads that must be followed, despite Mr. Blanche's
11:13claim that there are none. Epstein and Maxwell did not abuse women and children alone. They did
11:21not build their operation alone. Others enabled these crimes, exploited victims, and avoided accountability
11:27for decades. You do not have to take my word for it. Several weeks ago, after examining the evidence,
11:34Chairman James Comer directed Todd Blanche to open investigations into two men connected to Epstein.
11:41The Epstein files are not merely a collection of embarrassing names and politically damaging
11:47associations. They are records connected to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of girls and young
11:55women. They contain information about how Epstein's network worked, who assisted him, and whether
12:03additional crimes can still be investigated. The Department of Justice should pursue every credible lead,
12:09not just work tirelessly, not just to shut down the investigations. The survivors in this room know
12:19there are investigative leads because they are our stories. Mr. Blanche knows it too, yet he has chosen not
12:27to pursue them. Mr. Blanche's actions have destroyed survivors' trust. According to public reporting, Mr. Blanche spent
12:35approximately nine hours meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. He did not even spend nine minutes meeting with a
12:42survivor. Afterward, Maxwell was transferred to what many have described as a summer camp prison.
12:49We learned all of this through the news. Imagine what that feels like as a survivor to sit there
12:54if you were exploited by Ghislaine Maxwell and you're hearing this for the first time with no explanation,
12:59no outreach and no transparency from your... And to add insult to injury, the information that Todd Blanche gathered
13:07in the White House Situation Room last summer to curb the political fallout from the Epstein files was absolutely
13:14abhorrent. Instead of following investigative leads, our government treated and continued to treat this as a
13:21political crisis that needs to be managed. In our nation, everyone deserves equal protection under the law. Todd Blanche has
13:29been
13:29unwilling to protect Epstein survivors' personal information, and he has been resistant to
13:37investigate the people who helped Epstein and Maxwell commit those crimes. We need an Attorney General
13:42committed to ensuring that everyone who facilitated Epstein's crimes is held accountable. Please, I implore you,
13:50please, think carefully and think about the girls in these photos. Thank you.
13:59Subscribe to OneIndia and never miss an update. Download the OneIndia app now.
Comments