Ads Accuse Republicans of Protecting Epstein
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
In the closing stretch of the midterm campaign, Democratic candidates and allied groups aired ads accusing Republican candidates of protecting Jeffrey Epstein — the financier who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges involving minors — by opposing early efforts to release related federal files. CNN found more than $35 million spent on Epstein-related ads; The Washington Post found Democrats spent more than $40 million across six Senate races, including spots against Jeff Crank in Colorado, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Mike Collins in Georgia, and Jimmy Patronis in Florida. The ads typically cited Republicans’ refusal to join a House discharge petition — a procedure to force a floor vote outside regular order — after Donald Trump initially opposed releasing the files, reversing a campaign transparency pledge; Trump later backed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and all but one House Republican voted for it. Republican campaigns said the ads omitted that final vote: Crank’s campaign called the spot “intentionally vague” and said he opposed release until victim information was redacted; Hinson said she voted to release the files; Patronis’s campaign said he told a radio station he had “no problem getting everything all released” but that the issue was a “massive energy and time suck,” not that investigating Epstein was a “waste of time.” GOP candidates and allied groups also accused Democrats of Epstein-adjacent ties, including Collins charging Jon Ossoff with donations from Reid Hoffman, who said he knew Epstein only through fundraising and regrets it, and an outside ad claiming Deb Haaland flew on Epstein’s jet; Haaland took a 2014 flight booked by an Epstein-owned company and said she did not know that.
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Right-leaning coverage never mentions the Democratic ads accusing Republicans of protecting Jeffrey Epstein, a closing midterm fight that left-leaning coverage documents in detail. Left-leaning coverage reports more than $35 million spent on Epstein-related ads. Those spots treat opposition to an early discharge petition as protecting Epstein, and skip a later floor vote that all but one House Republican joined. Right-leaning coverage instead measures minutes of network attacks on GOP candidates and does not address the ads or that vote.
Left-leaning coverage leads with named races and a claim from Virginia Giuffre's family that a Colorado Republican "covered up Epstein's crimes". Right-leaning coverage leads with a NewsBusters tally of network negativity and never names those candidates or the files.
Which of the targeted Republicans voted against the final transparency act, rather than only refusing the earlier petition?
Bottom line
Ads that cost more than $35 million, according to the Guardian, hang protecting Epstein on Republicans for fighting a petition, not for the later floor vote almost all of them joined — and the Federalist does not cover those ads.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- All but one House Republican voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act when it came to the floor
- Ashley Hinson voted for the final Epstein Files Transparency Act but did not sign the discharge petition
- Jimmy Patronis told a radio station he had no problem getting everything released and never called an Epstein investigation a waste of time
- Donald Trump opposed the discharge petition for the Epstein files and later supported the legislation
- Jeff Crank's campaign said he would vote against releasing the files until victim information was properly redacted
The Left View
Left-leaning coverage presents the spots as a late push to make Republicans pay for siding with Trump against releasing files on a “notorious pedophile” accused of running a sex-trafficking ring involving minors. The Guardian highlights emotional testimony, including Virginia Giuffre’s family saying Crank “covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump,” and parallel charges that Hinson voted to “protect her donors” and that Collins refused release “even after he knew Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation exploited 14-year-old girls for sex.” The ads are described as intended to “evoke an emotional response” by accusing candidates of “protecting” Epstein, with the large buy framed as turning those earlier recorded votes into a closing campaign issue.
The Right View
Republican campaigns treat the ads as misleading attacks that erase the later near-unanimous House vote for release and distort candidates’ words. Hinson’s response ad said her opponent was lying and that she had to tell her sons, “No, Mom does not protect pedophiles”; Crank’s campaign said Jessica Killin was “preying on a grieving family with the help of the Washington Democrats.” The Federalist, citing a NewsBusters review of ABC, NBC, and CBS evening newscasts from Sept. 28 to Oct. 26, argues those networks ran 56 minutes 44 seconds of negative coverage of Republican campaigns versus less than 19 minutes for Democrats — audiences were “three times as likely to see negative news about Republicans” — and “dutifully avoided (for the most part) talking about scandals and gaffes of Democratic candidates,” which Geoffrey Dickens called coverage “meant to dissuade conservatives from going to the polls.”
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is the roll-call record at the discharge-petition stage: targeted Republicans did not join the effort to force a vote while Trump opposed release, so ads can cite those votes without inventing them. The right’s strongest argument is the later record and the copy: after Trump reversed, all but one House Republican voted for the Transparency Act, and several specific lines (Patronis calling an investigation a “waste of time”; Haaland on “Epstein’s private jet”) are weaker than the fuller quotes and flight details in the same reporting. The central unresolved tension is which vote counts as the politically relevant one — the petition stage, when GOP members followed Trump’s opposition, or the final floor vote to release the files.
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