That site is not the Republican National Committee's official page, Lahut wrote in a correction. The official address is gopconvention.com, and the domain drawing the traffic, gopdallas2026.com, appears to be what he called an "SEO trolling effort."
Search engines, like Google, use search engine optimization — or SEO — to determine the order in which websites are displayed.
And although the RNC convention website did not appear on the first page of Google's results, the troll domain was the very first result, presenting itself as the genuine article and carrying the title "RNC Midterm Convention | Dallas, TX Sept 9-10."
Visitors who click through reach a Justice Department page headed "Epstein Library," which asks whether they are 18 or older before showing anything else. The page carries a notice that officials redacted personal information about victims, the Western Journal reported.
The link spread quickly after The Lincoln Project, a group founded by former Republicans to oppose President Donald Trump, posted it late Friday morning, accompanied by an eyes emoji.
"If you try to visit the homepage for the Republican Midterm convention happening in Dallas you get redirected to the DOJ's Epstein files page. A hack maybe??" NewsNation Washington correspondent Hannah Brandt wrote on X about an hour later.
"I just tried the website and the below description, as of right now, is accurate. Sort of awesome," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted on X just after noon, sharing Lahut's report.
"The fact that the website for the upcoming RNC convention in Dallas redirects to the Trump DOJ's Epstein Files website is...AMAZING," MeidasTouch host and legal analyst Katie Phang wrote on Substack.
Phang sued the Justice Department in April over those same records, accusing it in federal court of "brazen" violations of the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act and naming Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as the defendant, MeidasTouch reported.
"Someone appears to have hacked the Republican National Convention website and it now redirects to the Epstein Files website," "No Lie" host Brian Tyler Cohen posted on X early Friday afternoon. The post has since drawn a proposed Community Note, the platform's crowd-sourced fact-checking label.
"This is expert level trolling," the progressive advocacy account Occupy Democrats wrote on X, crediting unnamed activists using search engine optimization.
The Republican Party mobilized soon after the new domain went viral.
"FAKE NEWS! Visit https://GOPConvention.com to get your tickets now!" the Republican Party's official account wrote on X in reply to Lahut's report.
"Fake news," the party's rapid-response account, RNC Research, wrote on X roughly two hours later in reply to a separate post about the redirect.
The party also circulated a video showing the official site working. In it, a browser managed by gop.com loads gopconvention.com from a typed address, and the page displays the message "THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA HAS JUST BEGUN." The video never shows a search results page, a Raw Story review found.
No one has publicly identified who registered gopdallas2026.com. A representative for the convention did not return a request for comment, Lahut wrote, and neither party account addressed who owns the domain.
The search-result trouble arrives days before a convention that Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters has branded "Trump-a-palooza," according to the Washington Examiner.
A Politico survey of more than 70 Republican candidates and members found that most either do not plan to attend or remain undecided, with dozens more declining to say. Forty-five cited prior commitments such as fundraisers, weddings and college tours. Reps. Zach Nunn (R-IA), Nick LaLota (R-NY) and Tom Barrett (R-MI) have said they will not attend, Politico reported.
"No, nope. Not at all," Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said when asked whether she planned to attend, according to Nexstar Media Group.
House members are being asked to pay at least $25,000 to attend, an amount that covers two tickets and a single hotel room, according to a registration guide obtained by Politico.
"You shouldn't be having to rally your base at this point," one House Republican told Politico, speaking anonymously. "You should be trying to convince independents. Independents are not attending nor watching the midterm convention."
The convention runs against the first two games of the NFL season and bumps against the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, raising questions about whether it will draw enough airtime to justify the expense, The Hill reported.
"And that was an error that some people around him privately acknowledge was something they had not been paying attention to," New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said on "Morning Joe" when asked whether Trump would draw the audience he wanted, according to HuffPost.
Dallas canceled a special event permit for an anti-Trump march planned near the arena, according to an email obtained by the Dallas Observer, and the police department expects to spend $1.8 million on security. Organizers say they will march anyway.
About 3.5 million pages of Epstein records released by the Justice Department will be printed and displayed in binders from Sept. 8 to 12 at a Dallas pop-up, The Dallas Morning News reported. Organizers call it The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room.
A taco truck converted into a bookmobile and wrapped in a photograph of Trump and Epstein together will circle the city on Sept. 10, the convention's second day, carrying a micro-printed set of the same documents, according to the newspaper.
