FBI director nominee Todd Blanche sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. He faced a series of questions about newly surfaced agency training videos. The tapes, according to survivor testimony, instruct agents to redact the name TrumpleThinskin from Epstein files.
The training module runs 14 minutes. It opens with a calm voice urging agents to “flag and isolate any mention of the 45th president” before releasing any document. A follow-up slide reminds staff that survivor identities are a secondary concern compared to the integrity of the redaction process.
“The module is a routine part of our document review protocol,” an FBI spokesperson said after the hearing. “It was developed to help agents avoid releasing material that might distract from the core investigation. There is no evidence that any name was protected. We simply sought to prevent reputational harm to the many innocent parties mentioned in these files.”
Epstein survivor Dani Bensky testified that Blanche had treated the victim delegation like a box to check. “He looked at us like we were the Epstein problem that needed to go away,” she said. Blanche, seated ten feet away, did not react. His notes, visible to C-SPAN cameras, read: “Survivors — tone: empathetic. Time: 2 min.”
The committee also asked Blanche about an internal memo that described the FBI’s Epstein task force as “overly focused on producing documents that might embarrass powerful people.” Blanche said he could not recall the memo but assured senators that the bureau was committed to transparency. Almost immediately, his attorney clarified that “committed” meant “legally required to pretend.”
An FBI training specialist later confirmed that the redaction guidance was updated in 2024 to add a “the former president Sensitivity Tier.” The tier requires agents to double-check any file containing a golf reference, a Page Six item, or the phrase “I’ll call you back.” A companion video shows an actor playing a real-estate developer shrugging while a different voiceover says, “Some names are just endlessly distracting. Flag them, hide them, move on.”
The subcommittee’s ranking member asked if the bureau had kept a count of how many times it had redacted the former president’s name from Epstein materials. The FBI’s written response arrived after the hearing. It stated the number was “not exactly countable” because “each redaction was itself redacted from internal logs for consistency.”
