This story was originally reported by Candice Norwood of The 19th. Meet Candice and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Every minute of every day, Liz Stein has to relive the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. She does it during news interviews and when meeting lawmakers on Capitol Hill to demand justice for herself and other survivors of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And she’s had to do it throughout the attorney general confirmation process for Todd Blanche, a man who rose from being President Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer to the top official overseeing the U.S. Department of Justice. Blanche has served as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 at DOJ, since March 2025. He then became acting attorney general in April after Trump fired his predecessor, Pam Bondi, and officially nominated him to oversee the department in June.
Since that time, Stein and her fellow survivors have consistently urged senators to vote against Blanche’s confirmation, arguing that he has shown no urgency or concern with expanding the Epstein investigation. Despite some initial pushback from two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche cleared that first hurdle to advance to a full Senate vote, in part by meeting with survivors — something he’d previously declined to do.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is in a tough re-election race in Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska then announced that they would join Democrats in voting against Blanche, raising the tension heading into the final vote. With last-minute support from GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the Senate confirmed Blanche, 50-49, early Saturday morning.
Stein told The 19th that just last year she felt momentum toward accountability growing, driven by public outrage from across the political spectrum and the Epstein survivors’ decision to step into the national spotlight as a unified group calling for transparency. However, Blanche’s confirmation crystalizes another feeling for Stein: “It feels like the DOJ is weaponizing this case for political reasons, and it feels like we’re the pawns being used in that game,” she told The 19th.
That momentum feels stagnant for now, Stein said, but she wants people to know that it won’t be a deterrent. “I think that every attempt the Department of Justice has made to make us go away has not worked,” she said. “We’re not going away.”
The Epstein cloud has hung over the Trump administration since the president began his second term, and included a series of perceived missteps by Bondi that drew criticism from both Democrats and Trump’s base.
In February 2025, Bondi claimed in interviews that her office would be releasing new documents tied to Epstein that would make people feel “sick,” and stated that she had a list of Epstein’s clients sitting on her desk. At a White House meeting the same month, she handed out binders to a group of right-wing social media influencers that contained no new information.
By July 2025, DOJ had released a memo stating it “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” Trump supporters began to weigh in. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who boasts an average of about 11 million listeners and viewers per episode, accused the administration of “trying to gaslight” the public about how much information it had on the Epstein case.
For Stein, DOJ’s “nothing to see here” attitude has been a constant. In September 2025, the human trafficking specialist and a group of about a dozen other survivors gathered publicly for the first time, standing in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. They called for investigations into Epstein’s associates, no presidential pardons or concessions for Maxwell and a full release of the Epstein files — documents and images capturing his personal relationships, business dealings and crimes.
Survivors advocated for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which became law in November 2025, and required the department to publish unclassified records and communications related to the investigation and prosecution of Epstein. Between December 2025 and March 2026, the department released hundreds of thousands of documents, photos and videos tied to Epstein.
In the process, DOJ publicly released the names of survivors who wanted their identities concealed, while redacting the names of people associated with Epstein.
Then, the releases stopped.
Behind the scenes, Stein said survivors were “practically begging” for meetings with DOJ officials, “making ourselves available, putting ourselves out there, and saying, like, ‘We want to help you in doing this.’”
“We have tried countless times to engage the DOJ, and they’ve had absolutely no interest,” she said.
That continued after Trump fired Bondi and Blanche took over as acting attorney general, survivors have said in interviews and testimony. On the first day of Blanche’s confirmation hearings on July 15, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he could not meet “directly” with survivors. The next day, survivor Dani Bensky questioned that reasoning as part of her testimony before the panel, citing news reports that Blanche met with Maxwell for four hours last year.
The meeting between Blanche and survivors happened later that week, after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring at the end of his current term, said Blanche must first meet with them before he would vote to advance the nominee to the full chamber.
Stein described Blanche’s energy in the meeting as “very dark.” She believes that he was simply checking a box to get a promotion. Survivors wanted to know about the redaction process for the Epstein files and why DOJ had not identified new investigative leads, she said, adding that they did not receive satisfying answers.
“There’s no humanity,” she said. “There was no ability to connect on a human level whatsoever. He was impenetrable as far as having any amount of real compassion or understanding of our experience.”
Leading up to the Senate Judiciary vote, Stein said survivors dropped off stacks of Epstein files that they had marked with potential investigative leads for members of the judiciary committee to look over. They also walked the halls of Congress “desperately” trying to meet with lawmakers. Stein said that they met with representatives for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas — one of the Republican holdouts heading into the Judiciary Committee vote. They did not, however, get a meeting with Tillis.
But Republicans, including Tillis and Cornyn, voted along party lines to advance Blanche’s nomination to a full Senate vote. Collins and Murkowski were the only Republicans to vote against Blanche’s confirmation. In a statement, Collins cited his efforts to shield the Trump family from IRS audits, and comments that he would approve national abortion restrictions. Murkowski noted an “acceleration” of the politicization of the DOJ, which she said includes “sweeping immunity protections granted to the president.” She also took issue with the DOJ handling of the Epstein files and Blanche’s comments to anti-abortion groups.
Reflecting on survivors’ advocacy over the last year, Stein said that “more often than not” they have had productive conversations with members from both parties. As a group, Epstein survivors have accomplished things that felt impossible years ago. Still, Democrats are generally more willing to engage and work with them, she said. While survivors may receive validation and positive feedback from Republican members privately, the lawmakers hesitate to voice those feelings publicly, Stein said, even when many of them have been champions for anti-sex-trafficking legislation.
Stein said she believes this issue — one in which young women and girls were abused by some of the country’s most powerful people — should not be political, but it is. The reality of having to spend her days convincing leaders to take action has an emotional cost, she said.
Moving forward, Stein said the survivors’ strategy is to remain resolute in their mission and goals. They will not back down, she said.
“But we’re human beings,” she added. “Imagine the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, having to confront it every minute or every day, and talk to people about it all the time, and just constantly rehash it. That’s a challenge for anyone.”