The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein is haunting the GOP in scores of ads this midterm season.
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Eighteen years after his first conviction, and seven years after his much-debated death, the ghost of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is suddenly inescapable again.
He’s the subject of scores of midterm campaign ads, each more lurid than the last. Asecondbill mandating the release of the Epstein files is currentlykicking aroundCongress. And on Monday, House Democrats releaseda new reportalleging that the Justice Department helped cover up details of Epstein’s relationship with President Donald Trump, calling — very aspirationally! — for an independent criminal investigation.
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Of course, no one really expects Trump’s attorney general to name a special counsel to investigate the Trump administration. In a statement, one White House spokespersonpanned the reportas “a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans.” (The timing, just one week before the midterms, does seem pretty fortuitous.)
The document, which runs to 50 pages, draws on public accounts and staff interviews with an unspecified number of survivors, including a former pageant queen who alleges that Trump raped her in 1993. The woman hadpreviously accused Trumpof groping her, which a Trump spokesperson dismissed at the time as “fake.”
When it comes to Epstein, however, Democrats don’t need a lot of new material to damage Trump. The scandal, and his administration’s handling of it, continue to cast a long, dark shadow over Republicans.
That’s surprising to me, candidly, because the decades-old dealings of even a very despicable sex offender don’t have any bearing on Americans’ day-to-day costs or experiences. And Trump has been able to brush off a lot of other unsavory behavior and associations.
But the Epstein story has lodged in the brains of some voters who helped elect Trump — includingyoung voters whose growing disillusionment could make a big differencein next week’s elections.
Many of these young voters “resent the fact that Trump’s basically become part of the establishment” and see the Epstein files as evidence of that, the political analyst Rachel Janfaza recently told Vox. Somealso feel burnedby Trump’s campaign promise to release the government’s investigative files on Epstein…andhis about-face once in office.
Democrats, sensing an opening, are hammering the issue. Relentlessly so. According to data from the tracker AdImpact cited by NBC News, there arecurrently more than 500 campaign adsairing across the country that include the words “pedophile” or “predator.”
Many of them reference Epstein or the so-called Epstein files, and three-quarters are backed by Democrats. Onerecent adfeaturing an Epstein survivor, and targeted at Kansas Republican Roger Marshall, slams the incumbent senator’s September 2025 vote to block a procedural measure that would have released the Epstein files. (The Senate later moved to release the files by unanimous consent.)
Another ad, this one in Maine, claims that Epstein’s “business partner” funneled $3 million to Sen. Susan Collins’s super PAC. (Importantly, the connection between Epstein and this purported partneris so tenuousas to be nonexistent.)
