Jeffrey Epstein survivor Danielle Bensky sobbed before a Senate committee Thursday as she accused acting Attorney General Todd Blanche of protecting a convicted sex trafficker while stripping more than 100 abuse victims of their privacy.
The Day 2 Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing for the nation's top law enforcement job was upended when Bensky took the witness table and described what she called eight months of silence and betrayal.
Blanche, she said, spent approximately nine hours meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein's convicted sex-trafficking accomplice — and did not spend nine minutes meeting with a survivor.
That meeting was followed by Maxwell's transfer from a Florida federal prison to a minimum-security camp in Texas, a move Politico reported appeared to violate Bureau of Prisons policy barring sex offenders from such facilities.
"Afterward, Maxwell was transferred to what many have described as a summer camp prison," Bensky said at the hearing.
While Maxwell's conditions improved, Bensky told the committee, her own life unraveled. The Department of Justice released her name, phone number, former addresses and workplace across three separate document dumps — even after their attorneys submitted 350 victims' names for redaction.
Blanche has said that the Bureau of Prisons, which is under his command, moved Maxwell for her protection after she faced threats.
"When my name appeared in the third file release," she said, her voice breaking, "it became difficult to believe that this was not intentional."
She began to sob.
"These documents contain disturbing yet incomplete accounts of my abuse," Bensky said through tears. "It was humiliating."
She said Blanche's decision to huddle with White House officials over the political fallout from the Epstein files — rather than pursue investigative leads — was worse still.
"The information that Todd Blanche gathered in the White House Situation Room last summer to curb the political fallout from the Epstein files was absolutely abhorrent," Bensky said at the hearing.
Bensky said Blanche never once reached out to survivors directly.
"He simply ignored us for the last eight months," she said.
