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For more than a year, the people protecting Jeffrey Epstein’s network have been betting that voters would move on. Two weeks before Election Day, that bet is looking like a bad one.
The Epstein files have followed the powerful straight into the midterms. Campaigns are spending millions to talk about them. Lawmakers are laying the groundwork for what comes next if control of Congress changes hands. And the banks that kept Epstein’s money moving are back in the spotlight.
The Epstein Files Are All Over the Airwaves
Campaigns have spent more than $35 million on more than 160 ads referencing Epstein this cycle, according to a CNN analysis. In 2024, there were just three such ads, all in local Florida races.
Nearly 90% of this year’s ads come from Democrats, from Georgia’s Senate race to Ohio’s. Some candidates have even started describing their opponents as members of the “Epstein class,” a phrase readers of this newsletter will know well.
This is not a messaging fad. The files keep showing that the people who enabled Epstein were bankers, executives and officials with real power, and voters keep showing they want answers. In a CNN/SSRS poll taken in January, just 6% of Americans said they were satisfied with how much of the Epstein files the government had released. Two-thirds said they believed the Justice Department was intentionally holding information back.
Next Up: The Banks
Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, introduced the Epstein Wall Street Records Act, with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) as the only Republican cosponsor.
The bill would direct the Federal Reserve, SEC, FDIC and Comptroller of the Currency to investigate financial institutions and executives with ties to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Regulators would have to hand Epstein-related supervisory records to Congress within 90 days and make them public within 120. If they found wrongdoing, they would have to bar the executives responsible from banking or refer them to the Justice Department.
The banks at the center of it are ones this newsletter has been tracking for months:
JPMorgan Chase, which kept Epstein as a client for years. It now calls the relationship “a mistake.”
Deutsche Bank, which took Epstein on in 2013, years after his guilty plea.
Bank of America, which allegedly failed to properly flag about $170 million in payments from Leon Black to Epstein.
Democrats have also called out Barclays over former CEO Jes Staley and Goldman Sachs over former counsel Kathy Ruemmler, saying the banks have provided unsatisfying answers about their Epstein ties.
Here’s the catch: the bill almost certainly won’t move unless Democrats win both chambers. The party that controls Congress in January will decide whether Wall Street’s role in this story ever gets a full public accounting.
And the Questions Won’t Stop at the Border
Across the Atlantic, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor remains under police investigation in the UK. He has not been charged and denies wrongdoing.
A Democratic House could subpoena unredacted files and hold hearings without needing the Senate or the White House. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) has already said he’ll keep calling on the former prince to testify in the next Congress.
Why This Still Matters
The Justice Department closed its Epstein review last year and has insisted ever since that there’s nothing left to find. But more than a dozen powerful figures have resigned over what’s in the files and just last week, Bard College’s president stepped down. Aside from Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, not one person has been criminally charged in the U.S.
Accountability hasn’t come from the people whose job it is to deliver it. It has come from survivors, reporters, lawmakers and readers who refuse to let this go.
In two weeks, voters get a say too.
Stay on the record with us
Contradictions Tracker: what the Epstein class told Congress vs. what the files show
Coverage + Accountability: every name we’re tracking and where they stand today, from “still in power” to “resigned”
Search the files yourself: more than 1.2 million documents, indexed and searchable
Below the Beltway: Camaron Stevenson’s weekly reporting
Have a tip about a bank, an executive or anyone else in the files? Send it to us.