Jeffrey Epstein has been dead for seven years, but he’s all over campaign ads this election season, invoked overwhelmingly by Democrats — and occasionally by Republicans — to attack opponents or promote themselves.
A CNN analysis found that candidates and outside groups have aired more than 160 unique Epstein-related ads in the 2026 midterms, backed by more than $35 million in airtime. That marks a striking jump from the 2024 presidential election, when only three such ads aired — all in local Florida races, where the Epstein scandal first erupted.
President Donald Trump and his allies helped keep the issue alive during the 2024 campaign by promising greater transparency and raising expectations that more Epstein records would be released. But this year, Democrats are driving the advertising surge, accounting for nearly 90% of the ads identified by CNN this cycle.
The ads underscore the political potency of the Epstein saga, nearly a year after the Justice Department released millions of pages of files following a bruising political fight led mostly by Democrats in Congress. While public pressure for accountability has been building for years, the issue hasn’t featured prominently in elections – until this season.
Pollingfrom the spring shows majorities of voters from both political parties believed the Epstein files showed that powerful people are rarely held accountable for their actions, but it’s unclear how the issue is playing out in the midterm elections.
Many of the attack ads feature misleading or even false claims about their opponents, including criticism over failing to vote for the release of the Epstein files, and, sometimes, tenuous ties to former Epstein associates or the so-called “Epstein class.”
‘This is bigger than Epstein’: What voters are saying about the files
The bulk of Epstein ad spending has gone toward battleground Senate races, reflecting the intensity of the messaging efforts there. Contests in Georgia, Texas and Ohio rank as the top three in terms of money spent on Epstein-related ads, with much of that money coming from well-funded Democrats making the controversy a point of emphasis in their campaigns.
In Georgia, more than $10 million has been spent on ads related to Epstein, according to data from Ad Impact, with more than three quarters of that money coming directly from the campaign of Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. He has repeatedly attacked his opponent, Republican Rep. Mike Collins, casting Collins as a Trump loyalist who voted against releasing the Epstein files.
“Mike Collins voted to cover up the Epstein files. Even after he knew 14-year-old girls had been raped,”said a former US marshal in one Ossoff Facebook ad. “He tried to tell us it was a hoax.”
But that ad is misleading.
Collins, along with all but nine House Republicans, voted against a procedural vote to release the files in July 2025, but he ultimately did vote for the release of the files in November of last year after Trump, reversing course, encouraged Republicans to vote for it.Collins also did not directlyuse the word “hoax,” but his team pointed to a Trump Truth Social post calling it the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” to deflect against a government shutdown.
Collins, in turn, hasaccused Ossoff of hypocrisyfor accepting campaign donations from tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, a liberal donor and former Epstein associate who once visited Epstein’s private island. (Hoffman has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein’s crimes and has expressed regret for his association with Epstein.) Collins then challenged Ossoff to return the money.
And in Ohio, more than $6 million has been spent on Epstein ads. Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lost the seat in 2024, and Republican Sen. Jon Husted have both bent the truth to attack the other over campaign donations from “associates” of Epstein.
Brown has launchedadafteradattempting to tie Husted to Les Wexner, the Ohio-based billionaire and former Victoria’s Secret CEO who once employed Epstein as his money manager. The Epstein files indicated Wexner was at one timeconsidered a potential co-conspiratorto Epstein’s crimes by the FBI.
