The fallout over the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes has emerged as a major issue in the midterm elections.
Candidates have hammered their opponents over whether they pushed to release the investigative files related to Mr. Epstein, and over their connections to donors and supporters associated with him. Over and over, they have issued a common refrain: They are running against the “Epstein class.”
The New York Times identified at least 35 congressional races with TV or digital ads that mentioned “Epstein” between January 2026 and the end of August, according to an analysis of data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. The stream of ads remained steady through the summer.
In trying to tie their opponents to the disgraced financier, some ads have omitted context or promoted weak links to Mr. Epstein. Here’s a look.
Votes on releasing the Epstein files
Until last November, Republicans in Congress were torn between voters pressing for the release of the Epstein files, and President Trump’s monthslong resistance to doing so.
More than a dozen Democratic candidates and their allies in House and Senate races highlighted votes by Republican rivals opposing efforts in the spring and summer of 2025 to release the Epstein files.
It is true that all but nine House Republicans voted in July 2025 against a procedural move to release the files (those nine members did not vote at all), and all but two Senate Republicans voted in September 2025 against an amendment to release the files. Republican members of the Rules Committee, which controls the pathway to bringing a bill to the House floor for a vote, stymied efforts to force the issue several times.
But the attack ads all omit that Republicans reversed their positions once Mr. Trump bowed to pressure last November. A measure to release the files passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and nearly unanimously in the House.
In Georgia, an ad from the campaign of Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, noted that his Republican opponent, Representative Mike Collins, “voted against releasing the Epstein files,” referring to that vote in July. Another campaign video added that Mr. Collins “even admitted Trump was in the files.”
That was a misleading reference to comments Mr. Collins made at a Republican Party event last August. Asked whether he believed Mr. Trump was in the Epstein files, Mr. Collins responded, “I’m sure he’s in there because he’s the one who was telling the F.B.I. about it.” (Mr. Collins’s comment was not accurate, either. The files contain tens of thousands of references to Mr. Trump, and they include mentions in news articles and in salacious and unverified tips.)
Meyer Siegfried, a spokesman for the Collins campaign, said Mr. Ossoff was “a shameless hypocrite” given that his campaign had received contributions from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn who also corresponded with Mr. Epstein and visited his island at least once.
In Florida, an ad from Gay Valimont, a Democratic candidate for a House seat, accuses Representative Jimmy Patronis, a Republican, of calling “investigating Jeffrey Epstein a waste of his time.”
That is not quite what Mr. Patronis said. Appearing on local radio in July 2025, he asserted that he had “no problem getting everything all released.” But he expressed frustration that the issue had “created an impasse for us getting things done.”
Donations from those with Epstein ties
Mr. Epstein’s wide-ranging connections with powerful people have led to recriminations in finance, politics, academia and entertainment. Political donations from those people are now fodder for attack ads.
In the Senate race in Ohio, both candidates traded attacks highlighting campaign contributions from donors with ties to Mr. Epstein.
Sherrod Brown, a former Democratic senator who is mounting a comeback campaign, has run at least eight different ads highlighting donations that Senator Jon Husted, a Republican, received from Leslie Wexner, a retail billionaire from Ohio who employed Mr. Epstein as his financial manager for decades and was identified in one exchange in 2019 among federal agents as a potential “co-conspirator.” (A legal representative for Mr. Wexner told The Times in 2025 that he was not a target of the federal investigation or considered a co-conspirator, and that Mr. Wexner had provided investigators with background information.)
“Husted took more money from Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators than anyone else in Washington and then voted to keep the Epstein files secret,” one ad claims.
Like all but two other Senate Republicans, Mr. Husted voted against releasing the Epstein files in September 2025, but reversed his position last November.
Mr. Wexner has donated more than $116,000 to Mr. Husted’s state and federal campaigns since 2001. Mr. Husted’s team does not dispute that figure, which includes contributions made to the campaign of Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, while Mr. Husted was his running mate.
Amy Natoce, a spokeswoman for Mr. Husted’s campaign, said that it had donated all available funds, totaling $34,300, to an anti-human trafficking charity. Donations from Mr. Wexner in past election cycles were spent and no longer accessible, she said.
Since 2001, Mr. Wexner has contributed more than $3 million to federal campaign coffers, the vast majority to Republicans, particularly in his home state of Ohio. Several other candidates and their affiliated political action committees received far more money than Mr. Husted, including Jeb Bush (more than $500,000) and Rob Portman (more than $300,000). None are currently in office.
In response, Mr. Husted has broadcast an ad calling Mr. Brown a liar, accusing him of accepting “a hundred grand from Epstein associates.”
The Husted campaign cited more than a dozen donors with varying degrees of associations to Mr. Epstein. Ms. Natoce questioned why, unlike the Husted campaign, the Brown campaign had not donated the contributions.
The donors include people with direct links to Mr. Epstein, such as Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard who routinely corresponded withMr. Epstein; Mr. Hoffman; Barry Diller, a Hollywood magnate who once visited Mr. Epstein’s island; and several people who exchanged emails with Mr. Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of Mr. Epstein’s who was convicted in 2021 for facilitating sexual abuse.
But others had more tenuous or virtually nonexistent ties, including: Mr. Wexner’s wife, Abigail Wexner; Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs; and the billionaire financier George Soros, who has no known links to Mr. Epstein.
Appearances in the Epstein files
In a few races, campaigns have focused on their opponents’ or their fund-raisers’ more direct links to Mr. Epstein.
In the Nebraska Senate race, Senator Pete Ricketts, a Republican, ran at least four different ads attacking Dan Osborn, an independent, for fund-raising with an “Epstein associate” named Dana Chasin.
“Chasin allegedly transported victims to Epstein’s home,” one ad claims. “Even after that information was public, Osborn continued to raise money with Chasin, until he got caught.”
Mr. Chasin, a Democratic operative and donor, gave $3,300 to Mr. Osborn’s campaign in March 2024. His name appeared in files that were released on Jan. 30, 2026, in a March 2024 email from a lawyer representing a woman who said that she had been sexually abused by a billionaire investor associated with Mr. Epstein. The lawyer, who later withdrew from the case, wrote that a person whose name is redacted flew on Mr. Chasin’s “small prop plane” to Mr. Epstein’s townhouse. (Mr. Chasin denied the allegations and told Politico that he had never owned or rented a prop plane.)
Mr. Osborn had been scheduled to attend a fund-raiser on Feb. 10 co-hosted by Mr. Chasin. But after Politico highlighted the email, he canceled the gathering. The Daily Wire, a conservative publication, also reported that a link to the canceled fund-raiser was still soliciting donations. The Osborn campaign took it down in late February.
Asked about the donation and the fund-raiser, Mr. Osborn said on Facebook in March that Mr. Chasin’s connection to Mr. Epstein “wasn’t widely known at that point” and that he “immediately” canceled the fund-raiser upon learning of it. He added that he had given Mr. Chasin’s $3,300 to a charity that supports sexual abuse victims.
The Osborn campaign said the ads were “laughable,” and noted Mr. Ricketts’ vote against releasing the Epstein files in September 2025. In a statement, the Ricketts campaign questioned why Mr. Osborn had not donated any contributions raised in association with Mr. Chasin’s canceled fund-raiser.
In the Senate race in New Hampshire, Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat, has zeroed in on a mention of his Republican rival, the former senator John E. Sununu, in the Epstein files.
“John Sununu denied that his name appears in the Epstein files and denied ever attending an elite event in Doha, Qatar, that Jeffrey Epstein used for networking,” one Facebook ad from the Pappas campaign reads. “The receipts prove otherwise. And separate reporting shows Sununu’s campaign has accepted contributions from billionaires with ties to Epstein.”
Mr. Pappas is correct that Mr. Sununu falsely denied attending the World Economic Forum in Doha in 2010. It is also true that Mr. Sununu’s name appears in the Epstein files. But the mention is brief, and it is unclear whether that reference was actually to Mr. Sununu or to his father.
In an email exchange that year, Boris Nikolic, a Gates Foundation adviser, asked Mr. Epstein if there was anyone he should meet at the event. Mr. Epstein mentioned Mr. Sununu, saying he had “good stories.”
Mr. Nikolic and Mr. Epstein did not clarify which John Sununu: John E. Sununu, the former senator, or John H. Sununu, his father who was the governor of New Hampshire and a former chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush. There is also no record in the files of Mr. Sununu meeting with Mr. Nikolic or Mr. Epstein at the event, which more than 450 people attended.
Mike Schrimpf, a spokesman for the Sununu campaign, called the ad “disgusting,” and said that neither Mr. Sununu nor his father “ever met or communicated in any way with Boris Nikolic or Jeffrey Epstein.”
The post Fact-Checking Midterm Ads Referring to Jeffrey Epstein appeared first on New York Times.
