WON'T GO AWAY

GOP Insider Makes Grim Admission About Dems’ Secret Weapon

Republicans fear a multimillion-dollar advertising assault could cost them the midterms next week.

A senior Republican election insider fears Democrats’ Jeffrey Epstein attack ads could suppress MAGA midterms turnout and help cost the GOP control of the Senate.

With President Donald Trump, 80, already struggling to keep his party afloat ahead of next week’s elections, the Dems are spending tens of millions of dollars attacking his candidates over their handling of the late sex offender’s case.

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Their aim is to exploit discontent among MAGA voters who feel betrayed by the administration’s failure to deliver the transparency it promised.

The fear inside GOP circles is not necessarily that disgruntled Trump supporters will switch parties, the insider said, but that they will simply stay home on Election Day, potentially giving Democrats a route to victory in otherwise safely Republican states.

“It’s problematic,” an unnamed senior Republican campaign official told Politico’s Playbook, acknowledging that the attacks were exacerbating existing frustrations among Trump supporters.

The official compared the strategy to deliberately aggravating a wound, while another Republican pollster characterized the approach as “Republican base suppression.”

According to Politico, the Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC has invested more than $20 million in Epstein-focused advertising aimed at Republican Senate candidates in Alaska, Maine, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, and Georgia.

Democrats have spent $53 million on advertising mentioning Epstein in competitive races, compared with $3 million from Republicans, according to an AdImpact analysis reported by the Washington Post last Thursday.

Their attacks connect the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein investigation with the wider feeling that powerful people in Washington somehow enjoy protections unavailable to ordinary Americans.

A Fox News poll released this month found that 88 percent of voters were extremely or very concerned about government corruption, compared with 85 percent who expressed the same level of concern about inflation and high prices.

And evidence suggests the strategy is already causing headaches for individual Republicans.

In Mississippi, Democratic Senate hopeful Scott Colom is airing an ad featuring a lifelong Republican voter identified as Mark, who has abandoned incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith over her opposition to an earlier effort to compel the release of Epstein records.

The voter saw the Trump administration’s bungled handling of the files as a deep betrayal that had destroyed his faith in GOP politicians, Colom told Playbook.

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The controversy is not limited to Senate races, and is also impacting congressional contests.

In Iowa, Republican Senate hopeful Ashley Hinson faced scrutiny over nearly $90,000 in contributions across three election campaigns from wealthy donors whose names appeared in the Epstein files.

And in Colorado, the family of prominent Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre attacked Republican Rep. Jeff Crank in a campaign advertisement after accusing his office of failing to engage with their efforts to secure the files’ release. Crank’s office said a staffer’s laughing reaction to a message from Giuffre’s family had been accidental.

The issue has plagued Trump since July 2025, when his Justice Department and FBI issued a controversial memorandum announcing that investigators had found no incriminating client list and saw no justification for further disclosures.

That enraged sections of the president’s own MAGA base, who had been assured his administration would expose Epstein’s wealthy and politically connected associates. The crisis was so severe that senior administration figures gathered in the White House Situation Room to devise a response, as the Daily Beast previously detailed.

The administration’s subsequent handling of the records has produced further controversies, and the scandal refuses to die off. House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a report Monday calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump’s relationship with Epstein, as Politico reported.

Democratic lawmakers have also indicated that a victory in the House would let them intensify their investigations into the president and his administration.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

The Beast contacted the White House and the Republican National Committee (RNC) for comment.

Naming multiple Democratic candidates who have taken campaign money from people named in the Epstein files, RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said: “The only party with an Epstein problem is Democrats whose campaigns are being bankrolled by perverts and pedophiles who maintained relationship (sic) with Epstein long after his conviction.”

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