Ashley Hinson is running for the U.S. Senate in Iowa. On October 13 she posted a new ad with this line:
"I voted to release the Epstein files and have spent years working across the aisle to protect survivors of sexual abuse. Men like Epstein, who hurt children, they'll have to answer to God. But men who lie about it to win an election, they'll have to answer to you."
The "men who lie" are her opponent, Democrat Josh Turek, whose own ad said Hinson skipped Epstein votes.
X readers attached a Community Note to her post:
"Rep. Hinson voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405) in Nov. 2025 after a discharge petition passed without her signature. She voted for prior procedural motions blocking standalone votes and did not sign key discharge petitions."
Every piece of that note checks out.
She voted yes when it was 427 to 1
Hinson did vote yes on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November 18, 2025. So did almost everyone. It passed 427 to 1.
But that vote only happened because of a discharge petition — a way for a majority of the House to force a bill to the floor over the Speaker's objection. Hinson didn't sign it. Speaker Mike Johnson held off swearing in Rep. Adelita Grijalva, whose signature would be the 218th, for nearly two months; any one Republican could have added a signature in that time. Hinson didn't. We laid out who refused to sign the petition — and the Epstein-linked billionaires who funded her.
Once the petition hit 218, the vote was going to happen with or without her, and Republicans scrambled to announce they'd vote yes.
Before that, she voted to block it
Four months earlier, on July 15, 2025, the House took a procedural vote that decided whether Democrats would get a vote on releasing the files. Defeating it, The Hill reported, "would have triggered a vote on Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) amendment requiring Attorney General Pam Bondi to preserve, compile and publish the Epstein files."
It passed 211 to 210. Ashley Hinson voted yes — to block it. One vote either way would have changed the outcome.
That September, when the House Appropriations Committee took up five Epstein-related votes over two days, she missed all five. The only vote she was recorded on either day was the one sending each bill to the floor.
So who's lying?
Hinson's ad says she "voted to release the Epstein files" and calls her opponent a liar. The full record is that she voted to keep a release vote off the floor when her vote could have mattered, didn't sign the petition that forced the issue, skipped five committee votes on it, and then joined a 427-to-1 majority once there was nothing left to stop.
Turek's ad said she skipped votes to expose the files. She did. Her ad leaves out everything before November.
What the record shows
Ashley Hinson's Senate ad says she "voted to release the Epstein files" and calls her opponent a liar. She voted yes on the 427-1 final vote in November 2025 only after a discharge petition she never signed forced it to the floor. In July 2025, she cast one of the 211 votes that blocked a vote on releasing the files by a single vote, and that September she missed all five Epstein votes in the Appropriations Committee.
