During attorney general nominee Todd Blanche's contentious hearing in the Senate, he made a very specific claim about why he hadn't met with survivors of the Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking case, but his answer was nonsense, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday evening.
"Will you meet with these ten survivors? I'm asking you on the record," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) in the exchange. To which Blanche responded, "They have lawyers. As you know, I'm prohibited from meeting directly with them. I have met with counsel for survivors, as have many people in the Department of Justice."
"What does he mean? He can't meet with the Epstein survivors if they have lawyers?" asked Tapper.
"Please let me correct this, because that is absolutely false," said Honig. Furthermore, he added, the falsehood is "devous" because "if you're not a lawyer, you might hear that and go, okay, I guess he's playing by the rules. He's wrong, and he knows it. He was a prosecutor for a long time."
To clarify, said Honig, rules of criminal procedure bar prosecutors from meeting with criminal defendants unless they have their lawyer present. But "if you're talking about a witness, there is no such rule." Furthermore, he said, "even if you wanted to be extra careful," you could simply ask the witness if they have a lawyer and tell them they can choose to speak with them with their lawyer present if they wish.
The upshot, said Honig, is that Blanche is "completely manipulating that rule ... to excuse his inaction with respect to survivors."