Dems laughed at a once-dismissed theory — now it's their secret weapon for midterms: Axios

When Rep. Ro Khanna began pushing to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, his own party thought he was wasting everyone's time.

"The establishment class thought I was crazy," Khanna told Axios. "They said nobody would care. Nobody would vote based on it."

They were wrong. With midterm elections approaching, Democrats across the country are pouring money into ads tying their Republican opponents to Epstein — betting that Trump's continued refusal to release the files has left a wound that voters haven't forgotten.

"What they missed," Khanna said, "is that Epstein goes to the core of what people hate about Washington: a rigged system where the rich and powerful play by different rules."

The clearest sign of how seriously Democrats are taking the issue: in Ohio's hotly contested Senate race, every single ad that veteran Democrat Sherrod Brown has aired this year has been an Epstein ad. Brown has spent nearly $1.5 million attacking freshman GOP Sen. Jon Husted over donations he accepted from Leslie Wexner, a financial client of Epstein's. Husted's campaign says it has donated those funds to an anti-human trafficking charity — and has noted that Brown himself previously accepted donations from Wexner's wife.

The stakes are highest in Maine, where Democrat Graham Platner is running in what both parties consider a must-win race for Senate majority control. In a six-figure TV ad, Platner accuses Republican Sen. Susan Collins of selling out voters to "the president and to the Epstein class," as footage of Epstein and Trump plays on screen.

In Georgia — one of Republicans' best pickup opportunities this cycle — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has made "the Epstein class" a centerpiece of his stump speech and media appearances, arguing it captures the broader corruption of the Trump era. The phrase has drawn some criticism as a potential antisemitic dog whistle, though that charge has been disputed — and notably, Ossoff himself is Jewish.

Democrats and allied groups have also aired Epstein-linked ads in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and New Mexico, where the issue has even spilled into an intraparty fight: in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, an outside group ran ads falsely linking former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to Epstein — ads a local news station rated "false and misleading."

Republicans are pushing back. RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels accused Democrats of "cynical political theater," pointing to the party's own historical ties to Epstein donors. "The same party now trying to weaponize Epstein to distract from their own failed policies spent years cashing Epstein-linked checks," she said.

Whether the strategy will work remains an open question. Despite Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie's bipartisan push to release the files, Massie was unable to turn Epstein into a winning issue in his own GOP primary — and was defeated last week after being targeted by Trump's political machine.

But Democrats say the general electorate is a different audience entirely. And Khanna, for one, is no longer being laughed at, according to Axios.