Epstein Survivor Accuses Melania Trump of Victim-Blaming With Surprise Address: ‘Puts All of Us on Our Heels’

 

A victim of the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein accused First Lady Melania Trump of victim-blaming in her surprise address about her connections to Epstein.

Danielle Benksy joined MS NOW’s Ana Cabrera on Friday to give her reaction to Melania Trump’s address to the nation, in which she acknowledged an email sent to longtime Epstein-associate Ghislaine Maxwell, now currently serving 20 years for sex trafficking. Melania Trump chalked up the email as “casual correspondence” and denied any significant relationship to Epstein or Maxwell.

Her husband, President Donald Trump, is a former friend of Epstein’s. He has lashed out at critics who have criticized the Department of Justice and their partial release of files related to Epstein’s case. Epstein died of an apparent suicide in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

Bensky told Cabrera that she and other survivors were “blindsided” by the first lady’s remarks. Bensky has said she was abused by Epstein when she was 17, and the billionaire threatened to withhold medical care from her mother in order to keep abusing Bensky.

The Epstein survivor told Cabrera that Melania Trump’s call for survivors to testify before Congress has put them on their “heels” as now the burden of exposing Epstein and others’ crimes is on them. Bensky blasted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and former attorney general Pam Bondi, accusing them of making statements contradictory to the first lady’s remarks, as both have been adamant that there is nothing left to investigate when it comes to the Epstein files.

Bensky said:

I think survivors were completely blindsided. I think we were expecting to hear from a lot of different voices. Melania was not on the radar, I would say, and it just speaks to the level of, the only thing that is certain is uncertainty in this administration. I heard blame be placed on survivors in this. 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. And it feels like this administration is often — I mean, it’s a masterclass in the art of deflection, right? And so yet again, we should be talking about Pam Bondi. We should be talking about what is Todd Blanche going to do. Which by the way, this is completely contradictory to the statements that he’s been making, which is nothing’s been mishandled, that basically we all need to just move on from this. And so I think it just puts all of us on our heels a little bit and just gives us pause. And 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. The burden needs to be on the FBI. We have an FBI, we have a DOJ. They need to do their jobs.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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Zachary Leeman covered pop culture and politics at outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, BizPac Review, HollywoodinToto, and others. He is the author of the novel Nigh. He joined Mediaite in 2022.