Danielle Bensky, a survivor of the late sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, suggested first lady Melania Trump was victim-blaming during her surprise address Thursday where she distanced herself from the offender.
“I heard blame be placed on survivors in this,” Bensky told MS NOW’s Ana Cabrera on Friday. “I think that it feels like the burden has been now placed on survivors to come forward and speak in front of Congress, when in reality, we’ve been asking for proper investigations and for trials to move through this the right way from the very beginning.”
The first lady called for a congressional hearing for the survivors during her press event and addressed speculation over her connections to President Donald Trump’s former friend Epstein and his imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony,” she told reporters. “Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record.”
Over a dozen Epstein survivors accused the first lady of “shifting the burden onto survivors under politicized conditions that protect those with power” in a statement released Thursday.
Bensky echoed the survivors’ statement during her appearance on MS Now, telling Cabrera, she “feels like this administration is often, I mean, it’s a master class on the art of deflection, right?”
She noted that Melania Trump’s remarks were “completely contradictory to the statements” from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said the “extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it … should not be a part of anything going forward.”
“I think we really are just completely caught off guard and trying to figure out, you know, what our next move is, but that the burden needs to be on the DOJ,” Bensky said. “The burden needs to be on the FBI. We have an FBI, we have a DOJ. They need to do their jobs.”
Bensky warned of the potential dangers of going in front of Congress to testify, telling Cabrera that “survivor safety should be paramount, and it’s something that this administration doesn’t seem to care much about.”
“So, like, there are no safety precautions and procedures put in place at this point, which is why we’ve been, you know, asking for the release of the files,” she added. “We’ve been asking for the transparency so that we can follow investigative leads, like we need to start the investigations.”
