Sullivan should have led the opposition to Todd Blanche’s nomination

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is sworn in as he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

By Rich Moniak

Sen. Dan Sullivan isn’t a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But if he were a true leader in combatting sexual assault and abuse, he would have immediately expressed his objections to Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general. Other Republican senators would have joined him. And the judiciary committee would not have advanced the nomination for a vote by the full Senate.

“Victims of human trafficking and sexual abuse of minors — whether in Alaska or nationwide — need to know that their government is working for them, not against them,” Sullivan’s press secretary wrote in the Juneau Empire 10 years ago. “And perpetrators need to know that we won’t rest until they are brought to justice.”

The law eventually caught up to Ghislaine Maxwell. She was a close friend Jeffrey Epstien, the disgraced financier who pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008 and committed suicide in 2019 after being indicted for sex trafficking of minors. In 2021, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, and one count of sex trafficking of a minor.

However, conspiracy theories persisted about Epstein’s death and a coverup to protect prominent public figures. President Donald Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, and others helped keep them alive.

On at least two occasions while campaigning for president in 2024, Trump hedged on releasing the so-called Epstein files but indicated he was inclined to do so. In Feb. 2025, his Department of Justice “declassified and publicly released” the first phase of the files. But most of the documents had been previously made public.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, in May 2025 Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump he was named in the files multiple times. That shouldn’t have surprised anybody. Epstein and Trump had been close friends for years.

In July, Bondi issued a memo stating “no further disclosure” of the files “would be appropriate or warranted." Trump took to calling the files another hoax created by Democrats.

Before the month ended, Blanche spent two days interviewing Maxwell as if she was a credible witness who would never seek anything  in return. She told him she never witnessed Trump acting “inappropriate with anybody.” Blanche then ignored Bureau of Prison policy by transferring her from a low-security prison to a minimum security prison camp.

But it wasn’t until last month that Blanche finally took an hour of his time to meet with Epstein’s victims. And he only did that to satisfy the concern of a Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee.

Meanwhile, in response to a lawsuit filed by an independent journalist alleging DOJ has failed to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a federal judge determined “Blanche has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”

Quite clearly, Blanche is working against the victims of sexual trafficking and abuse, not for them. To be more exact, he’s working for Trump, who said last November “we have nothing to hide" by releasing the files. But that was months after he failed to prevent likely passage of the act by demanding House Republicans drop the issue.

What’s also clear is Trump and Blanche are working for fake victims. Trump pardoned everyone convicted of violently attacking the Capitol and police officers during the Jan. 6 insurrection. And in an attempt to reward them, they created an Anti-Weaponization Fund which a federal judge described as an “attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”

While it’s true that Blanche formally rescinded the fund, Trump said he would still like to see the criminals he pardoned “compensated for the pain” of being justly convicted in a court of law.

It’s corrupt thinking like that which makes it conceivable that Trump will eventually pardon Maxwell. With Blanche as his attorney general, it’s likely DOJ won’t pursue the other perpetrators who colluded with Epstein.

And if Sullivan votes to confirm Blanche, he’ll prove he no longer cares about victims of sexual trafficking or any woman sexually assaulted or abused by men in power.

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.