MAGA Report Cards — Epstein Files

Ashley Hinson Missed Five Epstein Votes in One Week. On One of Those Days, a Billionaire Named in the Files Gave Her $14,000.

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 13:04:28 +0000

In the first ten days of September 2025, the House Appropriations Committee voted five separate times on forcing the Justice Department to give up what it was holding on Jeffrey Epstein.

Flight logs. Visitor records for his houses and his plane. Bank records. A full accounting of every document the department had on Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

All five failed. Ashley Hinson sits on that committee. Her name is not on any of the five roll calls.

It is on something else from those same two days, and that is the part worth sitting with.

Five votes, five absences

You don't have to take anyone's word for this. The House publishes the committee's roll calls, name by name, in the report on each bill.

On September 3, 2025, the committee marked up the Financial Services and General Government bill and took 20 recorded votes. Three were about Epstein:

Roll Call 11 — cut off money for the White House budget office until the Epstein files are released. Failed 26–33.
Roll Call 12 — bar public money from being used to keep back the visitor logs, flight manifests and guest records for Epstein's homes and private plane. Failed 26–34.
Roll Call 14 — bar the Treasury Department from withholding, blacking out or slow-walking financial records on Epstein and Maxwell, including the suspicious-activity reports banks file when money looks dirty. Failed 28–33.

Hinson is listed in neither the yes column nor the no column on any of the three. You can read the full vote tables for that markup and check for yourself.

A week later, on September 10, 2025, the committee marked up the bill that funds the Justice Department itself. Nineteen recorded votes. Two were about Epstein:

Roll Call 12 — require the attorney general to hand the committee a list of everything the Justice Department has that relates to Epstein and Maxwell. Failed 28–33.
Roll Call 17 — bar the department from withholding, redacting or delaying the release of unclassified records in the Epstein-Maxwell case. Failed 28–34.

Same result. Hinson's name is on neither one.

Five chances to be counted. Zero appearances.

One vote each day, and neither was an Epstein vote

Here is what makes this different from an ordinary absence.

At the end of each of those two markups, the committee voted on the thing leadership actually needed: the motion to send the bill to the House floor. September 3, adopted 35–28. September 10, adopted 34–28.

Hinson is recorded on both — and on nothing else. "Mrs. Hinson" appears exactly once in each day's vote tables. She is missing from all 19 other recorded votes on September 3 and all 18 on September 10, the five Epstein amendments among them.

So this is not a member sitting out the awkward votes and staying for the rest. It is a member who cast one vote at each markup: the one her party needed her for.

The amendment nobody had to put their name on

There was a sixth Epstein measure that week, and it tells you something about how this works.

On September 10, Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez offered an amendment to hold back $35.5 million from the Justice Department until the attorney general turned over every document on the decision to move Ghislaine Maxwell out of a federal prison in Tallahassee and into a minimum-security camp in Bryan, Texas.

That move was real, and it was recent. Maxwell is serving 20 years for helping Epstein abuse girls. She was transferred to the Texas camp on August 1, 2025 — days after Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general and formerly Donald Trump's personal defense lawyer, spent two days interviewing her at a Florida courthouse.

The amendment was killed on a voice vote. No roll call. No names. Nobody on the committee had to be on the record about whether the public should learn how Maxwell got a better prison.

We're noting that because it's the one part of this story where nobody can be pinned down — including Hinson. She didn't dodge that vote. There was nothing to dodge.

Blanche is now the attorney general. The Senate confirmed him 50–49 at 4:17 in the morning on August 8, 2026. Hinson's reaction, to CBS2 in Cedar Rapids: "We need someone to have that position. I don't think leaving it unfilled was a good thing for our country. And so I'm glad the Senate was able to get him confirmed."

What came in on September 10

Federal Election Commission records are public, and they are searchable by date.

On September 10, 2025 — the day of Roll Call 12 and Roll Call 17 — Ashley for Iowa, Hinson's Senate campaign committee, recorded two contributions of $7,000 each: one from Stephen A. Schwarzman, the co-founder of Blackstone, and one from his wife, Christine Schwarzman.

Fourteen thousand dollars, from one household, on that day.

Schwarzman's name appears in the Epstein files more than 20 times. He has never been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein, and there is no evidence he ever emailed Epstein directly. That is worth saying plainly, because the true version of this is bad enough on its own.

The true version is this: on a day when a member of the Appropriations Committee had two recorded chances to vote for opening a set of files, and took neither, her Senate campaign banked $14,000 from a billionaire household whose name is inside them.

Nobody had to arrange that. That's the point.

We've been here before with her

This is not the first time the calendar has lined up this way.

Last month we wrote about the Daily Beast's finding that Hinson and her committees took nearly $90,000 from billionaires named in the Epstein files — about $30,500 of it during the same fall stretch when she was refusing to sign the discharge petition that would have forced the files onto the House floor. Out of 219 House Republicans, exactly four signed it. She was not one of them.

Her stated objection was not that the files should stay sealed. It was that forcing the vote would hand the floor to Democrats — a procedural complaint about her own party's convenience.

And it is not the first time she has been missing from her own committee. Congressional records show she has missed 163 committee votes and 33 floor votes since taking office in 2021 — including, in that same September 2025 stretch, three votes in one day on funding to fight violence against women.

Committee votes are the ones that almost never show up in a member's published attendance rate. That is exactly why they are worth counting.

What she did when it was free

On November 18, 2025, after Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva's signature finally forced the discharge petition over the line, the Epstein Files Transparency Act came to the House floor and passed 427 to 1. Hinson voted yes. Of the 428 members who voted, only one voted no.

By then the outcome was decided and a no vote would have been a national headline. In her own committee, two months earlier, when five votes were live and her name would have gone on the record, she wasn't there for a single one.

What the record shows

Ashley Hinson sits on the House Appropriations Committee. On September 3 and September 10, 2025, that committee held five recorded votes to force the release of Epstein records — flight logs, visitor lists, bank records, and the Justice Department's full inventory. Hinson's name appears on none of them. On both days her name appears on the final vote to send the bill to the House floor — the only vote she is recorded on either day. On September 10, the day of two of those votes, her Senate campaign took $14,000 from Stephen and Christine Schwarzman; Schwarzman's name is in the Epstein files more than 20 times. She then refused to sign the petition that would have forced the files open, and voted for release two months later, when the count was 427 to 1 and her vote changed nothing.

Source

Jesse Valentine, "Hinson missed multiple votes on Epstein investigation", American Journal News, August 27, 2026. Photo: AP. The individual roll calls, vote totals and member lists in this post were independently verified against the House Appropriations Committee's published vote tables for the September 3, 2025 and September 10, 2025 markups, and the contributions against FEC records.

A Childhood Abuse Survivor Asked Clay Higgins Why He Was the Only 'No' on the Epstein Files. The Town Hall Went Downhill From There.

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:08:39 +0000

Clay Higgins opened his town hall in Crowley on Thursday night with a plea for civility.

"Perhaps you don't agree with the person sitting next to you, politically, or person that lives across the street, maybe you don't vote the same, but you breathe the same air man. We are all Americans we stand in glory underneath the same flag."

"We owe that to each other, so as your Congressional Representative, which I am humbled to be."

According to The Advocate, questions about glyphosate, environmental regulations, SpaceX and the Epstein files then led to heated exchanges — including one in which Higgins told a constituent he would personally carry him out of the building.

The question he came to Crowley to avoid

A resident stood up and identified themselves before asking anything:

"As a survivor of over a decade of childhood abuse at the hands of an army veteran, I must ask why you are the only Congressman who voted not to release the Epstein files."

That is not a gotcha. That is a constituent explaining why the question matters to them personally, and then asking it plainly.

Higgins's answer was that releasing the files would violate 200 years of criminal justice procedure by mandating the release of confidential criminal investigative files. He said he wasn't happy about victims' confidential names being released. He said we need to let the justice system play out before politicizing an investigation.

"Innocent until proven guilty, is that not our standard."

We have been through this answer before. When Higgins cast the lone vote against the Epstein Files Transparency Act, 427 to 1, he gave the same explanation — and the bill already let the attorney general redact victims' personal information, child abuse material, and anything touching an ongoing case. The protection he says he was defending was written into the text he voted against.

It's also worth remembering what Higgins does in Congress. He chairs the subcommittee that subpoenaed those same files. He is not a bystander to the question a constituent stood up to ask him.

Then he offered to carry a man out

The exchange that blew up was about glyphosate — the weed killer sprayed on crops, in a district full of them. A resident asked about it. The back-and-forth escalated.

Here is Higgins:

"If the gentleman would allow me to answer his questions, if you want to run for Congress, knock yourself out."

The resident's reply, per KLFY: "Oh no, we have that in common, I don't like politicians."

Somewhere in that exchange Higgins told the man he would carry him out of the building himself. Another attendee heard it as a threat and shouted:

"These are the people you serve, don't threaten him, I heard you threaten him, it's on video, you said you're going to take him out yourself."

To be precise about what's established: The Advocate reports as fact that Higgins told a constituent he would personally carry him out of the building. The characterization of that as a threat — and the "take him out" phrasing — comes from an attendee in the room, who said it was recorded.

Either way, a sitting congressman who opened the evening asking Americans to respect one another spent part of it telling a voter he'd remove him from the room by hand.

The other thing he wanted to talk about

Higgins also addressed rumors about SpaceX coming to Vermilion Parish, and volunteered his personal regard for Elon Musk:

"I've broken bread with him on a few occasions, he's one of the smartest, and the oddest man I've ever met."

A congressman telling constituents about breaking bread with the world's richest man, at a meeting where they came to ask about pesticide spraying and a child sex trafficking investigation, is its own kind of answer about whose company he keeps.

Why town halls matter here

Most Republicans in Congress have simply stopped holding these. Higgins deserves the narrow credit for showing up in a room where people could ask him things.

But showing up is the floor, not the achievement. What Crowley got was a plea for civility, a recycled explanation for the most conspicuous vote in the House, an anecdote about Elon Musk, and an offer to carry a constituent out of the building.

The survivor who stood up to ask the first question still doesn't have an answer that matches the bill's actual text.

Source

Joel Thompson, "Clay Higgins calls for unity as Crowley town hall turns heated over key issues," The Advocate, and "Tensions rise during Crowley town hall," KLFY, Aug. 14, 2026. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The Republican Who Wrote the Bill Says Andy Biggs Killed It: 'Women and Children Suffered Three Years Longer Because He Protected the Bad Guys'

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:07:43 +0000

Andy Biggs is the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona. Before that he was president of the Arizona Senate. And in 2013, according to the Republican who wrote the bill, he is the reason a police force accused of protecting child abusers kept its badges for three more years.

What the bill would have done

Colorado City, Arizona sits on the Utah line and is the historic seat of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the sect that broke from the Mormon Church over polygamy. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, was convicted of sexually assaulting two underage girls he had forced into marriage.

Colorado City shares a police department, the Marshal's Office, with Hildale, Utah across the border. For years the accusation against that department was not that it failed to stop the FLDS. It was that it worked for them.

The U.S. Justice Department eventually sued both towns, alleging the shared marshal's office selectively enforced the law and served FLDS leadership rather than the public — including an effort to return a fleeing child bride to the group.

In 2013, Arizona legislators tried to do something about it. A bill to strip the marshal's office of its authority passed the state House overwhelmingly.

Then it went to the Senate, where Biggs was president. It never got a vote.

The bill's own sponsor says he buried it

Michelle Ugenti-Rita, then a Republican state lawmaker, wrote that bill. She has been blunt about what happened to it, and about the cost:

"Women and children suffered three years longer than they should have because he protected the bad guys."

Flora Jessop, who escaped the FLDS, told the Washington Post that legislators had "more than enough" to act on.

This is not a Democratic attack line. It's the bill's Republican author, and a survivor of the sect, saying the same thing.

The Post also spoke to a county Republican supervisor who said he cast an early ballot against Biggs over precisely this — he wanted a candidate "who has made a stand for women and children above religion."

Biggs's explanation

Asked about the accusation that he killed the bill, Biggs said officials had been "trying to gather more information." On whether the marshal's office was corrupt, he said: "I'm not sure we ever got to" that conclusion. He questioned whether legislators had enough evidence to justify the state stepping in.

Set that against the timeline. Warren Jeffs had already been convicted. The federal government went on to sue the towns and win.

The evidence Biggs says he wasn't sure about was sufficient for the Department of Justice.

And note what "gather more information" meant in practice. He wasn't required to pass the bill. He could have let it come to the floor and let 30 senators vote. Instead the thing died where nobody had to go on record — which is the specific power a Senate president has, and the specific reason it's hard to pin down afterward.

Except the sponsor pinned it down.

Thirteen years later, the same instinct

In December, Biggs was publicly demanding the Epstein files. He posted that "Americans deserve transparency from the corrupt FBI – starting with Epstein's client list," and asked flatly: "Where is Epstein's client list?"

On July 23, 2025, he got the chance to vote on it. A House subcommittee took up a measure demanding the Justice Department release the files. It passed 8 to 2, with three Republicans joining five Democrats.

Biggs was one of the two no votes.

His chief of staff didn't respond when the Phoenix New Times asked about it.

He is not the only Republican who found the files less urgent once a vote was attached. Clay Higgins was the only member of the entire House to vote against releasing them on the floor, 427 to 1. James Comer, who chairs the committee that could compel them, has handled the whole subject with conspicuous gentleness.

But the pattern is worth naming in Biggs's case specifically, because it's the same shape as 2013: loud in public about accountability, quiet where it counts, and unavailable for comment afterward.

What Arizonans are actually voting on

Biggs is asking Arizona to make him governor. A governor signs or vetoes bills, appoints agency heads, and decides which investigations the state pursues.

The record he brings to that job includes a stretch as the most powerful man in the Arizona Senate, during which a bill to disarm a police force accused of serving child abusers passed the House and quietly expired on his watch — and the Republican who wrote it has spent the years since saying he's the reason.

He's also asking for the job on an abortion record most Arizonans don't share.

Voters can weigh his explanation — that nobody was sure. They should weigh it against the fact that the Justice Department was sure enough to sue, and won.

Source

Hannah Knowles, "Small-town fight may haunt Andy Biggs, GOP governor candidate in Arizona," The Washington Post, July 20, 2026; and TJ L'Heureux, "Andy 'Where's the client list?' Biggs votes no on Epstein files release," Phoenix New Times, July 24, 2025. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Marsha Blackburn Demanded the Epstein Files From the FBI and the IRS. A Senate Report Says She Turned Down the Chance to Subpoena His Banks.

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:53:15 +0000

There are two ways to be for transparency. One is to write letters demanding it. The other is to cast the vote that actually gets it.

Marsha Blackburn has done a great deal of the first. A new Senate report says that when she had the chance to do the second, she passed.

The report

On August 4, 2026, Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden released "Looking the Other Way," the product of a four-year investigation into how Jeffrey Epstein moved his money.

Its finding is that JPMorganChase, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank saw suspicious Epstein transactions as far back as 2002 and, in most cases, did not alert the Treasury Department until after his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. More than a dozen bankers knew.

"I said from the start that if you want to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up, you had to follow the money," Wyden said. "This report is a ready-made roadmap for prosecutors, investigators and members of Congress to finally start holding the Epstein class accountable."

Buried inside that report is a section about Tennessee's senior senator.

What the report says Blackburn did

Wyden says that from 2024 to 2025 he went to Blackburn's staff repeatedly, asking for her help as a Republican member of the Finance Committee to subpoena Epstein's bank records.

He went to her specifically, the report says, because Blackburn had long been an outspoken proponent of transparency on Epstein.

Her office declined.

In December, Wyden asked her to co-sponsor the Produce Epstein Treasury Records Act — a bill that would require the Treasury Department to hand Epstein's financial records over to the committee. She didn't. The bill still has 10 sponsors, every one of them a Democrat.

The Senate Finance Committee is where the bank records live. Suspicious Activity Reports go to Treasury, and Treasury answers to Finance. A subpoena from that committee is the mechanism. It is not a symbolic gesture, and it is not something a senator can do by writing a letter to somebody else.

What she said publicly instead

Here is the part that is hard to square.

The following year, Blackburn posted on social media that her "efforts to crack the Epstein trafficking ring wide open have been stonewalled by Democrats at every turn."

That same day, she wrote to newly appointed FBI Director Kash Patel, calling it "paramount that the FBI provide full transparency to the American people and immediately release the complete, unredacted records in this case." She asked specifically for the flight logs from Epstein's plane and helicopter, the names of associates including Ghislaine Maxwell's "little black book," footage from Epstein's Florida home, and any other records related to the Epstein and Maxwell matters.

Also that same day, she wrote to the IRS, asking it to release materials revealing the names of everyone who had a financial relationship with Epstein or Maxwell.

So on a single day, Blackburn asked two federal agencies she does not control to release Epstein's financial records — and said Democrats were blocking her — while, according to Wyden, sitting on the one request from a Democrat that would have used her own committee's subpoena power to get bank records directly.

Neither her campaign nor her Senate office answered the Nashville Banner's questions about the report or the subpoenas.

The rest of her Epstein positioning

Blackburn is not a bystander on this issue. She is the Republican nominee for governor of Tennessee, and she has made punishment of sex offenders a centerpiece of that campaign.

Asked by the Banner whether she would continue executions as governor, she said yes — and went further:

"As governor, I will work to bring back the electric chair so that victims' families can get the closure they deserve. If you rape or molest our babies in Tennessee, you should get a death sentence."

That is a maximal position on punishing sex crimes. It sits next to a report saying she wouldn't sign a subpoena for the banks that processed a sex trafficker's money for seventeen years.

If she wins in November, Blackburn leaves the Senate in January — and with it, any role in the Epstein records fight. She has also told the Banner she'll stay in her Senate seat until she's sworn in as governor, which would let her appoint her own replacement.

This is the pattern, not the exception

Blackburn is not alone in this. The gap between what Republicans say about the Epstein files in public and what they do with the powers they hold has been the defining feature of this story.

James Comer chairs the House committee investigating the files. He spent two years subpoenaing the Bidens — then let Attorney General Pam Bondi sit for an interview that was neither sworn nor videotaped, stopped holding formal hearings, and said he wouldn't call JD Vance or Susie Wiles.

Tom Emmer, the House majority whip, promotes his committee's other investigations constantly and says nothing about its Epstein one — the one his own son runs.

And when the House finally voted on releasing the files, the tally was 427 to 1. That vote is what a real position looks like: it is recorded, and you can't take it back.

Blackburn's letters are recorded too. So, now, is what she did when a subpoena needed one Republican signature.

She has a straightforward way to answer this. She could say whether Wyden's account is accurate, and if it is, why she said no. As of publication, her office hasn't.

Source

Report alleges Blackburn refused to help with Epstein probe — Sarah Grace Taylor, Nashville Banner, August 13, 2026. Photo: Nashville Banner.

James Comer Spent Two Years Subpoenaing the Bidens. On Epstein, He Let the Attorney General Skip the Oath and the Camera.

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:21:25 +0000

James Comer runs the congressional investigation into how the federal government handled the Jeffrey Epstein files. As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, he decides who gets called, in what format, under what rules, and whether the public ever sees it.

We know what Comer looks like when he wants answers. We watched him do it for two years to the Biden family — subpoenas, depositions, an impeachment inquiry, a nearly 300-page report.

The Epstein investigation does not look like that.

The Attorney General Didn't Have to Be Sworn In

In March 2026, the Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files. She was scheduled to sit for a deposition on April 14. That deposition never happened; she was removed as attorney general around that time.

She finally appeared on May 29 — and by then the terms had changed.

Instead of a deposition, Comer agreed to a voluntary, closed-door transcribed interview. She was not sworn in. It was not videotaped. She brought Justice Department lawyers with her, including Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, attending as agency counsel rather than as her personal attorney. Comer said the committee would release a transcript, but no video.

Every one of those is a choice, and every one of them made the session weaker. Not under oath means no perjury exposure. No video means no clip of a witness pausing, deflecting, or looking at her lawyer. Agency counsel in the room means someone is there to object.

Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said afterward:

"We continue to be incredibly disappointed of the decision to not have this interview videotaped and then released to the American public."

And on the central question, it didn't matter what anyone asked. According to the transcript, Bondi declined to answer questions about President Trump's involvement in the handling of the files — including when she and Trump first discussed the Epstein investigation.

The chairman had subpoena power. He used it to get a conversation.

He Won't Call the People the Reporting Points At

In June 2026, The New York Times reported that Vice President JD Vance and other top advisers had repeatedly met in the White House Situation Room in 2025 to discuss public demands for the Epstein records.

Garcia wrote to Comer asking him to bring White House officials in. As he put it to reporters:

"We have reporting now, I think pretty substantial reporting, that the vice president is leading meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein files, so they have a responsibility to come forward and explain to us why the hell that's happening."

Asked directly about Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Comer told Spectrum News he would not call them in. His answer was about Democrats, not about the meetings:

"All they go and imply is the Epstein files is just three million pages about Donald Trump and his cabinet, and that's not true. We're bringing anybody."

"We're bringing anybody" and "I will not call the Vice President" were said in the same interview.

He is willing to lean on witnesses outside the White House. When Alan Dershowitz skipped a scheduled transcribed interview in July, Comer wrote to him that "your counsel failed to provide a reason for your refusal to testify. This is unacceptable," and warned that the committee would "explore all available tools at its disposal, including the use of the compulsory process" if Dershowitz didn't appear on September 2.

So the chairman does know how to threaten a subpoena. He just doesn't aim it at the White House.

He Stopped Holding Hearings

In May 2026, Democrats on the committee flew to Palm Beach and held their own field hearing with Epstein survivors — because, as members of the minority, they can't schedule an official one.

Rep. Maxwell Frost explained why they had to:

"We want to host this here in D.C., but James Comer doesn't want to call any more hearings, because he knows that we would be able to successfully issue more subpoenas to move this investigation forward."

Frost said the committee had shifted to round tables, "which are unofficial hearings that are actually off the record, not under oath", and accused Comer of "obstructing this investigation and completely doing everything he can to help the White House cover this up."

That word — "unofficial" — is the whole design. A formal hearing creates a record, a transcript, and a procedural path to more subpoenas. A round table creates a conversation nobody has to answer for.

The Pattern Started With the First Subpoena

This isn't new as of 2026. It showed up in the very first round of Epstein subpoenas.

In July 2025, two of Comer's subcommittees told him to issue two subpoenas. He moved on them at very different speeds.

On July 22, a subcommittee adopted Tim Burchett's motion to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell. Comer issued that subpoena the next day.

The subpoena for the Justice Department's actual Epstein files didn't go out until August 5 — "nearly two weeks after Republicans on one of the panel's subcommittees joined with Democrats and voted to direct committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., to subpoena the DOJ," as NPR reported.

One day for the convicted associate already sitting in federal prison. Nearly two weeks for the Trump administration.

There's one more. In March 2026, Comer went on Fox News and said the federal government "asked New Mexico to stop their investigation" of Epstein's ranch — a state criminal probe shut down in 2019, during Trump's first term, when the Justice Department was run by Attorney General William Barr. Comer said it out loud, on television, as chairman of the committee with subpoena power.

He has not hauled in the officials who made that call. New Mexico eventually had to sue the Justice Department itself to get at its own investigation.

Compare It to the Investigation He Wanted

The contrast isn't hypothetical. Comer ran a very different investigation, in the same chair, with the same tools.

For nearly two years he led an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and his family. Depositions. Subpoenas. Public hearings. It ended in August 2024 with a nearly 300-page report that rehashed familiar allegations and recommended no articles of impeachment at all. Biden was never impeached.

And when the shoe was on the other foot, Comer said the quiet part plainly. In January 2023 he announced an investigation into classified documents found at Biden's home — then said the same week that his committee would not investigate Trump's handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago:

"There have been so many investigations of President Trump. I don't feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump."

That was 2023. Nothing in 2026 suggests he changed his mind.

Why This Matters to People in Kentucky

It's easy to read all this as a Washington fight between two parties over a chairman's calendar. It isn't.

The Oversight Committee is one of the only tools the public has to force the federal government to explain itself. It's not a partisan asset — it's a public one. When the person holding it decides in advance which side of the building he won't point it at, the tool stops working for everybody, including the people in Kentucky's 1st District who sent him there.

The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have spent years being told the government will get to the bottom of it. Comer says so himself — "the government has failed the survivors of Epstein," he told Spectrum News, "and that dates back several administrations."

He is right about that. He is also the person currently in charge of doing something about it, and he's the one who decided the attorney general didn't need to raise her right hand.

Comer isn't hard to find on this. He's just hard to ask — he skipped a town hall his own constituents organized in July 2025 after they reached out to his office eight times trying to find a date.

We've seen this shape before, one floor up in the same party. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has spent months amplifying one Oversight Committee investigation while saying nothing about the Epstein one. The difference is that Emmer only has to stay quiet. Comer is the one holding the gavel.

Source

Spectrum News, "Rep. James Comer rejects calls for White House officials' Epstein testimony" (June 2026). Photo: Spectrum News.

Mike Carey Gave Back Les Wexner's $3,500 and Called Epstein 'Profoundly Evil.' A Month After Taking That Check, He Voted to Keep the Files Sealed.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 20:26:06 +0000

Giving back a tainted campaign check is easy. It costs $3,500 and buys a headline that says you did the right thing.

Voting to release the files is hard. It costs you a fight with your own leadership.

Mike Carey did the first one. Let's talk about the second.

February 2026: the deposition

On Wednesday, February 18, 2026, the House Oversight Committee deposed Les Wexner — the founder of L Brands, once Ohio's wealthiest man, and for twenty years Jeffrey Epstein's client — about his relationship with Epstein.

Epstein was Wexner's personal financial adviser from 1987 to 2007, a period in which Epstein reportedly misappropriated millions of dollars from him. Wexner is listed as an alleged co-conspirator of Epstein in a 2019 FBI document, the Ohio Capital Journal reported. A legal representative for Wexner told the outlet that "the Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner's legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect," and that Wexner "cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again."

Wexner has written checks to Ohio politicians for more than forty years. When the Epstein files started coming out and the subpoena landed, a scramble began.

"It's a big political problem for anybody that's been getting Les Wexner money over the years," University of Akron political scientist David Cohen told the Capital Journal. "This scandal is not going away. It's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger."

What Carey did — and credit where it's due

Wexner donated $3,500 to Mike Carey for Congress in June 2025.

Over the weekend before the deposition, Carey said he had donated all of Wexner's contributions to organizations that fight human trafficking and help survivors.

"Epstein was a profoundly evil man whose crimes destroyed countless innocent lives," Carey said in a statement.

That is the correct thing to say and the correct thing to do, and he should get credit for both. Plenty of Ohio politicians didn't. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther has declined to give up more than $91,000 in Wexner money. Sen. Bernie Moreno, who took $3,500 in June, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which took $250,000 from Wexner at the end of October, didn't respond to the Capital Journal's questions at all.

So this post isn't about the $3,500. It's about what Carey was doing in the months between cashing that check and returning it.

July 2025: the vote that actually mattered

On July 15, 2025 — one month after that donation — the House voted on a procedural rule. Buried in what it allowed and disallowed was whether the House would get to vote on forcing the Justice Department to publish the Epstein files.

Republicans used the rule to make sure it wouldn't. The rule passed 211–210.

Two hundred eleven to two hundred ten. One vote.

Mike Carey voted Yea.

There is no version of that math where his vote didn't matter. In a one-vote margin, every member who voted yes is the deciding vote. He could have flipped it by himself.

That's the moment. Not the check. In July 2025, releasing the Epstein files was a live question that a single member of the House could have changed, and Carey chose the side that kept them sealed. The reporting at the time was explicit that House Republicans were blocking Democrats from forcing a vote on the files.

November 2025: the vote after it stopped costing anything

Four months later, after a discharge petition had gathered 218 signatures and after Donald Trump publicly relented, the House finally voted on the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

It passed 427 to 1.

Carey voted Aye.

Of course he did. By November 18, 2025, voting yes was free. Four hundred twenty-seven members voted yes. There was no leadership to defy, no Trump to irritate, no risk of any kind.

Put the two votes next to each other and the pattern is unmistakable:

When his vote could have released the files (211–210, July): he voted to keep them sealed.
When his vote changed nothing (427–1, November): he voted to release them.

That is not a change of heart. That is a man who waited to see what was safe.

And then the files came out

The Justice Department began releasing the Epstein files in December 2025, and the full release landed on January 30, 2026: more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

United Nations human rights experts said the material contained "disturbing and credible evidence" of what may amount to a global criminal enterprise, and said some of the conduct could meet the threshold for crimes against humanity — including sexual slavery, torture and enforced disappearance.

That is what was inside the files Carey voted, in July, not to release.

Three weeks after that release, he gave back $3,500.

Why the gesture rings hollow

Robert Alexander, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University, framed the donation-return wave for the Capital Journal this way: there's an assumption that people don't give money just to give money, and "if that individual appears to be tainted, then there's going to be some suspicion that they were able to get some kind of favor or influence."

He added: "when you are dealing with things that are as sordid as those that are contained in the Epstein files, it would be hard to imagine politicians not wanting to divorce themselves from that situation."

That's the honest read on all of this — including Carey's. Returning the money was the easy, obvious, self-protective move once the files were public and the cameras were pointed at Ohio. Nobody had to be brave to make it.

Being brave was July 15.

The rest of the pattern

None of this is out of character. Carey has spent his time in Congress being reliably unavailable when it counts.

He won't hold an open in-person town hall — his one telephone town hall came with call-in information his office promised to post and never did, and WOSU has tried to interview him 17 times without success. Before Congress he was a coal lobbyist who was a registered lobbyist on House Bill 6, the law at the heart of Ohio's largest bribery scandal, which took more than $683 million from Ohio ratepayers.

He is on the ballot again this year. If you want to ask him why he voted to keep the Epstein files sealed in a 211–210 vote, you'll have to catch him — and that is the one thing he's very good at preventing.

Source

Megan Henry, "Ohio billionaire political funder Les Wexner to be deposed by members of Congress in Epstein probe," Ohio Capital Journal, February 18, 2026.

427 to 1: Clay Higgins Was the Only Person in Congress Who Voted to Keep the Epstein Files Secret

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:35:00 +0000

On November 18, 2025, the U.S. House voted on whether to make the Justice Department release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.

The vote was 427 to 1.

Clay Higgins was the one.

Not one of nine. Not one of a bloc. Out of 428 members who cast a vote — every Democrat, every other Republican, the whole ideological range of the House of Representatives — exactly one person voted no, and he represents Louisiana's 3rd District.

You can look it up yourself in the official roll call.

What he said

Higgins didn't hide from it. He put out an explanation the same day:

"I have been a principled 'NO' on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today."

His objection was about innocent people getting swept up:

"As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt."

That is a real concern in the abstract. Investigative files do contain people who did nothing wrong.

It is also a concern the bill already answered.

What the bill actually says

Read the protections in the Epstein Files Transparency Act, as CBS News laid them out. The law lets the attorney general withhold or redact:

documents containing "personally identifiable information of victims or victims' personal and medical files," where release would be "a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy"
child sexual abuse material
anything that would interfere with an ongoing criminal case
classified national security information

And any redaction has to be explained to Congress.

So the bill is not a dump. It hands the attorney general — appointed by the president Higgins supports — the authority to black out exactly the category of material he says he was worried about, and then requires her to justify it.

Higgins said he'd back the bill if the Senate amended it to "properly address the privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated." The provisions above were already in the text he voted against.

He titled his own press release "Higgins Casts Vote to Protect Epstein Victims"

That's the actual headline on his official House page from November 19, 2025.

A vote against releasing the Epstein files, announced as a vote to protect the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

The bill he voted against is the one with the victim-privacy redactions written into it.

The part that makes it strange

Here is what doesn't fit the "protect the innocent" story.

Higgins chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement — and, as the Associated Press noted, that is the subcommittee that initiated the subpoena on the Justice Department for the Epstein files in the first place.

He used his gavel to demand the documents. Then he cast the only vote in the entire House against a law requiring the department to hand them over.

His stated alternative was that the Oversight Committee's own investigation had already produced more than 60,000 pages and would keep going, with proper protections. But that's a committee process the majority controls, releasing what it chooses when it chooses. The bill would have made release a legal obligation with a deadline, subject to redactions the attorney general has to defend.

One of those two things can be quietly slowed down. It isn't the statute.

Who this protected

Strip away the procedure and ask who benefits from an Epstein file that stays closed.

Not witnesses, whose personal information the bill already lets the government redact. Not victims, whose files the attorney general can withhold outright. The people who benefit from a sealed investigative file on a convicted sex trafficker of minors are the powerful people whose names appear in it and who were never charged.

The House understood that, which is why the count was 427 to 1.

It's worth remembering how the bill even reached the floor. It didn't get there through the normal committee process — the Rules Committee voted twice to keep it off the floor, and it took a discharge petition, signed by a majority of members going over the committee's head, to force the vote. By the time it happened, the outcome wasn't in doubt. Every Republican in the chamber could see it passing.

Higgins voted no anyway. Give him this much: he didn't take the free yes.

The record he's built

This is a member who pushed a debunked conspiracy theory at the FBI director about "ghost buses" of FBI informants on January 6 — and cut him off when Wray answered with "an emphatic no." Who posted, then deleted, a tweet mocking the hammer attack on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi. Who wrote of Haitian immigrants that they were "wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere," and, asked about it on CNN, said: "It's all true."

Louisiana's 3rd District sent him to Washington nine years ago. On the single clearest transparency vote of this Congress, he stood alone against the other 427.

We deserve better.

Source

"Who voted against releasing the Epstein files? Rep. Clay Higgins explains his opposition to the House's bill," CBS News, November 18, 2025. Photo: Getty Images via CBS News.

Nick Langworthy Sat on the Committee That Could Release the Epstein Files. He Voted No Twice, Then Yes When It Was 427-1.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:30:00 +0000

Most members of Congress never get to decide what the House votes on. A dozen or so do. They sit on the House Rules Committee — the panel that, as one report put it, "decides which bills and amendments the full House can vote on."

Nick Langworthy sits on it. He is the only New Yorker who does.

Twice in 2025, that committee was asked to let the House vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. Twice, Langworthy voted no.

July 2025: "a pointless political gimmick"

On July 14, 2025, Rep. Ro Khanna offered an amendment that would have required Attorney General Pam Bondi to gather and publish the government's records on Epstein. The Rules Committee rejected it, five votes to seven.

Only one Republican on the panel — Ralph Norman of South Carolina — voted yes. Langworthy voted no, along with Virginia Foxx, Michelle Fischbach, Erin Houchin, Austin Scott, Morgan Griffith and Brian Jack.

When a local station asked him why, his office sent this:

"Congressman Langworthy supports full transparency on the Epstein files and believes anyone who committed crimes—especially against minors—must be fully prosecuted. This issue shouldn't be politicized, but that's exactly what the Democrats did with their amendment stunt that was completely unrelated to the bill and wouldn't have released a single file. He voted no because it was a pointless political gimmick, not a path to justice."

Note the structure of that answer. He supports full transparency. He just voted against the thing that would produce it, because someone he doesn't like proposed it.

The same day, the full House killed Khanna's effort on the floor through a procedural vote — a "motion on ordering the previous question" — that passed 211 to 210. One vote.

September 2025: not a gimmick, and he blocked it anyway

The "unrelated amendment" objection had an obvious answer: bring a standalone bill. Democrats did.

On September 9, 2025, the Rules Committee voted on whether to send the Epstein Files Transparency Act — the bipartisan bill from Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie — to the House floor. This was not an amendment bolted onto a crypto bill. It was the whole point of the legislation, and it carried protections for victims, withholding or redacting anything that would expose a victim's personal or medical information.

The committee killed it 8 to 4, on a party-line vote. Langworthy was one of the eight, alongside Foxx, Fischbach, Norman, Chip Roy, Austin Scott, Morgan Griffith and Brian Jack.

There was no gimmick left to object to. He voted no anyway.

November 2025: 427 to 1

What finally moved the bill wasn't the Rules Committee. It was a discharge petition — the procedure that lets a majority of the House go over the committee's head and force a floor vote directly.

Once the signatures were there and passage was guaranteed, the vote happened. On November 18, 2025, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House 427 to 1.

Langworthy voted aye.

Then he put out a statement: "I stand for full justice for all of Jeffrey Epstein's victims and today's vote marks another step toward accountability."

That is a fine sentence. It would have meant something in July, when his vote was one of the five that mattered, or in September, when he was one of eight people standing between the bill and the floor. In November it cost him nothing. Four hundred and twenty-seven members voted the same way.

Why the committee votes are the ones that count

There's a reason to care more about a 5–7 committee vote than a 427–1 floor vote.

On the floor, one member out of 435 rarely changes an outcome. In the Rules Committee, thirteen people decide whether the other 422 get a say at all. When Langworthy voted no in July, the margin was two votes. When he voted no in September, he was one of eight blocking a bill that — the moment it escaped the committee — turned out to have the support of virtually every member of the House.

Put those two facts side by side. In September, Langworthy helped keep a bill off the floor. In November, that same bill passed with one dissenting vote in the entire chamber. The committee wasn't reflecting the House's view. It was overriding it.

And the public's view wasn't ambiguous either. The western New York group Lake Effect Change, tracking his votes, pointed to a PBS/NPR/Marist poll finding 77% of Americans supported releasing the files — including 67% of Republicans.

The pattern in his district

This is a member who has built a record on not being in the room.

Langworthy has not held a single in-person town hall since taking office in 2023. When constituents invited him to one in April 2025, he didn't respond, and they held it with an empty chair where he should have been. In February 2026, the community radio station in Jamestown published a piece saying his office repeatedly failed to tell them about press conferences he was holding in their own county.

We've written about what that looks like from the Southern Tier.

The Epstein votes are the same instinct applied to the House itself: keep the question from being asked, and when it finally gets asked anyway, answer it the popular way.

We deserve better.

Source

"Langworthy defends voting no on Epstein files," News10/Nexstar. September Rules Committee vote list via Yahoo News.

A State Had to Sue the Federal Government to Investigate Child Sex Crimes. Three Days Later, 50 Republicans Promoted the Man It Sued.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:23:04 +0000

On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, the state of New Mexico did something states almost never have to do.

It sued the United States Department of Justice.

Not over a regulation. Not over funding. New Mexico sued because it says the federal government is blocking a live criminal investigation into the sexual abuse of women and girls at Jeffrey Epstein's ranch — crimes that happened inside New Mexico's own borders, to New Mexico's own people.

The lawsuit names acting Attorney General Todd Blanche personally.

Three days later, at 4:17 in the morning, fifty Republican senators voted to give Blanche the job permanently.

What New Mexico is asking for

The state's complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., asks a judge to order the Justice Department to hand over unredacted Epstein investigative files.

New Mexico argues the refusal breaks federal law and stomps on the state's basic authority to investigate and prosecute crimes committed on its own soil. That's not a small claim. It's the argument that a state gets to police its own territory.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, put it plainly:

"We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses, and additional criminal conduct at Zorro Ranch. Their delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying justice Epstein survivors deserve."

On a call with reporters, Torrez said his office has made ten separate requests for information. Every one has been ignored or denied.

"We have heard repeatedly they will cooperate and what our team has experienced is anything but cooperation."

And:

"Todd Blanche today with a stroke of a pen could grant us the access that he claimed. Instead they have decided to stonewall, to obstruct and to frankly conceal for whatever reason."

This isn't the first time the feds told New Mexico to sit down

Here's the part that should make you angry.

Back in 2019, federal prosecutors asked New Mexico to pause its own investigation. They promised to share what they found when they were done.

They never did.

Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas — the man who agreed to that deal — wrote to Torrez in a July 20 letter saying the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York simply failed to honor it.

So the timeline is: the federal government told a state to stand down on a child sex abuse investigation, promised to share the evidence, kept the evidence, and is now refusing to hand it over seven years later.

New Mexico reopened the case in February 2026. Since then, the state — not the FBI, not the Justice Department — conducted the first law enforcement search of Zorro Ranch that has ever been done.

Epstein bought that property in 1993. He died in 2019. Nobody searched it while he was alive.

What they're looking for

A separate bipartisan panel — New Mexico's Truth Commission, a four-person legislative subcommittee with two Democrats and two Republicans on it — released its first report the same day the lawsuit was filed.

The findings so far, reported by FOX 4 and confirmed by the Christian Science Monitor:

Evidence that Epstein abused about five women and girls at Zorro Ranch between 1996 and 2012.
Roughly 30 other people who may have been victims, witnesses, or facilitators — or some combination.
Federal redactions in the released files are actively blocking the commission from verifying what it has.

The commission has issued 20 subpoenas and gotten back more than 100,000 records. Seven of those subpoenas were flat-out ignored — including by the Federal Aviation Administration and by the same U.S. Attorney's Office in New York that told New Mexico to stand down in the first place.

Rep. Andrea Romero, who chairs the commission, described what that silence has cost:

"In the seven years since Jeffrey Epstein died, in the two decades since his crimes first drew attention of law enforcement, no government, federal, state, or local, has ever compiled an account of what he did in New Mexico."

Twenty years. Nobody wrote it down.

The Justice Department's excuse, and what survivors said about it

The Justice Department's answer is that court orders bar it from disclosing "victim-identifying information carte blanche," and that New Mexico hasn't given a lawful reason for such sweeping disclosures. It says protecting victim privacy is a top priority.

Torrez's response was that his office has "provided them with ample legal justifications," and that the department is hiding "behind the Epstein survivors."

The survivors themselves answered that one. In a joint statement to NBC News, some of the women Epstein abused said:

"The DOJ's argument that it won't hand over files in order to protect survivors' identities is laughable, when the DOJ has already revealed their names and personal information. By holding onto these files, Todd Blanche's DOJ is simply continuing to protect abusers."

That is not a partisan talking point. That is the people the policy claims to protect saying the policy is a lie.

It lands harder because the Justice Department's actual record on redactions is a mess. When it began releasing Epstein records in December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, what came out was largely material that was already public or blacked out so heavily it meant nothing — while accusers' personal details slipped through.

Now: the part that's on Republican senators

New Mexico filed this lawsuit on Wednesday, August 5. It was national news that day and the next.

The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general on Saturday, August 8, by a vote of 50 to 49.

Every yes vote was a Republican. The margin was one.

Fourteen of those yes votes came from senators we track: Marsha Blackburn, Shelley Moore Capito, Tom Cotton, Darline Graham, Bill Hagerty, Jon Husted, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Marshall, Ashley Moody, Pete Ricketts, Jim Risch, Mike Rounds, Dan Sullivan, and Tommy Tuberville.

They had the information. A state attorney general had just gone to federal court and accused this man, by name, of obstructing a criminal sex trafficking investigation. Lisa Murkowski, one of only two Republicans who voted no, said the Justice Department's "handling of files" connected to Epstein was part of her reason.

Fifty of her colleagues shrugged and confirmed him before sunrise, then left town for a month of vacation.

They already voted to keep these files sealed once

This is the pattern, and it is on the record.

On September 10, 2025, the Senate voted on an amendment whose stated purpose was, in the Senate's own words, "To direct the Attorney General to make publicly available documents related to Jeffrey Epstein."

Republican leadership moved to table it — the procedural way of killing something without having to vote on it directly. The motion to table passed 51 to 49. Two votes the other way and the files would be public today. Rand Paul and Josh Hawley were the only Republicans who broke ranks.

We pulled the roll call. Every single senator on this list who was in the Senate that day voted to table:

Blackburn. Capito. Cotton. Hagerty. Husted. Hyde-Smith. Marshall. Moody. Ricketts. Risch. Rounds. Sullivan. Tuberville.

Thirteen for thirteen.

The same thirteen then voted to make Todd Blanche deputy attorney general in March 2025, and voted for him again in August 2026 after a state sued him for withholding the very documents they'd voted to keep sealed.

That's three chances. Three times the same answer.

Dan Sullivan's case is the sharpest: he voted to keep the files sealed and then took campaign checks from two men who appear in them. Over in the House, Ashley Hinson refused to sign the petition to force the files open while billionaires named in those files wrote her nearly $90,000 in checks. And Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who never misses a chance to promote his committee's investigations, has stayed conspicuously quiet about the Epstein one — the one his own son runs.

Who this actually hurts

While all of this plays out in Washington, the ranch itself has moved on.

Epstein's estate sold Zorro Ranch in 2023 to the family of Don Huffines, a Texas Republican recently appointed his state's comptroller. Huffines has said the property is being renamed San Rafael Ranch, after a saint associated with healing, and that his family plans to run a Christian retreat there.

A healing retreat, on the property where nobody has finished asking who was hurt.

Meanwhile a New Mexico survivor named Rachel Benavidez sat in a hearing room in Santa Fe last Wednesday and asked, again, for the evidence to be released.

"I use this survivor platform to stand on the right side of every survivor's journey toward truth and justice. I am holding onto faith that real accountability will be achieved."

She is holding onto faith. Her state had to sue the federal government to get a look at the files. And the senators who could have made this a condition of confirming an attorney general — who had the leverage, in a vote decided by one — used it for nothing.

Fourteen of them are on this site. You can look up every one.

We deserve better.

Source

Daniel Miller, "New Mexico sues federal government for release of Epstein files" (FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth, August 6, 2026). Additional reporting from NBC News and the Associated Press and Source New Mexico. The Truth Commission's interim report is public. Photo: NBC News.

At 4:17 in the Morning, 50 Republican Senators Handed the Justice Department to Trump's Personal Lawyer

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 22:20:53 +0000

At 4:17 a.m. on Saturday, August 8, 2026, the United States Senate made Todd Blanche the attorney general of the United States.

The vote was 50 to 49. Every one of the 50 yes votes was a Republican. Every Democrat voted no. Two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted no with them. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did not vote.

One vote. That's the whole margin.

Todd Blanche is Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer. Not "was, a long time ago." He was hired in 2023 to defend Trump against criminal charges, he was a lead attorney on Trump's defense team at the hush-money trial in New York, and he defended Trump in the two federal cases brought by the Justice Department he now runs.

Fifty Republican senators looked at that and said: perfect, give him the whole building.

What they actually voted for

This wasn't a close call that turned on some technical dispute. The objections were enormous, they were public for weeks, and several Republicans raised them out loud before folding.

A $1.8 billion fund for Trump's supporters. Trump sued the IRS. Then he settled that lawsuit with his own administration. The settlement created a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to pay people who say the criminal justice system mistreated them — and Trump was explicit that he meant the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6. He called them "great American Patriots."

Tax audit immunity for the Trump family. The same settlement shielded Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization from IRS audits and enforcement on past returns. A federal judge who handled the IRS case described Trump's lawsuit as an improper exercise in self-dealing. The union representing IRS workers went to court two days before the vote to try to block the immunity deal.

Prosecuting the president's enemies. Under Blanche, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with threatening the president — over a photo of seashells arranged to read "86 47" that Comey posted online. It charged the Southern Poverty Law Center. It opened an investigation into the lawsuits E. Jean Carroll brought and won against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. Comey's lawyers are asking a judge to throw his case out, accusing the department of misleading judges and withholding key facts.

Blanche's answer to all of this was two letters, written on August 2. One said the order creating the fund "is rescinded and shall have no force or effect." The other narrowed the tax immunity deal.

That was enough for fifty senators.

The letters aren't worth much

Here is the part nobody should skip past.

ABC News reported that the agreement Cornyn and Tillis accepted contains no language preventing the fund from being brought back under a different name or a different method. The Judiciary Committee advanced Blanche anyway on August 4, on a 12–10 vote along party lines.

Brandon DeBot of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law told NPR what the letters were worth:

"These assurances are not worth the paper they're written on. They don't pull back on the attempts to give the president and his affiliates unauthorized immunity from tax audits. And they don't do anything new to stop the president from trying to bring back the fund."

And the president himself spent the week before the vote saying he wanted the fund back. Trump told reporters the fund would have been "very fair," that it could have given "some solace" to Jan. 6 defendants, and: "I view that fund as a positive, and a lot of Republicans do too."

So the deal was: Trump says out loud he still wants it, his own lawyer signs a piece of paper saying it's cancelled, and the Senate calls that a win and goes home for a month.

Thirteen of them had already done this once

This is the fact that should follow every one of these senators around.

On March 5, 2025, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general — the number-two job — by 52 to 46. Everything anyone objected to on Saturday morning happened after that vote, on the job that vote handed him.

Every single Republican we track who was in the Senate in March 2025 voted yes then, too. Blackburn, Capito, Cotton, Hagerty, Husted, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Moody, Ricketts, Risch, Rounds, Sullivan, Tuberville — all yes, both times.

They didn't get fooled. They got exactly what they voted for, twice.

Susan Collins voted yes in March 2025 as well, and then announced a no vote on August 4 — hours after the two Republicans with real leverage had already given theirs away.

What Blanche did to the Justice Department

Before the vote, more than 1,200 former Justice Department employees — people who served across 14 administrations, including dozens of former U.S. attorneys — signed a letter to the Judiciary Committee urging senators to reject him.

Their director, Stacey Young, put it this way:

"Since his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the President, not the Constitution."

The letter's numbers are the part that should worry anyone who has ever called the FBI or reported a fraud. Under Blanche's watch, over 16,000 employees left the department, including more than a quarter of its attorneys. Agents, analysts, immigration judges and career prosecutors were fired for declining to bring vindictive prosecutions, for refusing to lie in court, or for working assigned cases the president didn't like. Others were pulled off their real work to patrol streets in Washington, D.C.

The letter says the consequences reach far past the Justice Department's own hallways:

"They've meant that much of the department's vital work isn't being done, or isn't being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans' rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable."

That is 1,200 people who spent their careers inside the Justice Department, serving under presidents of both parties, telling the Senate this man should not get the job. Fifty senators voted yes anyway.

The Epstein survivors told them, too

Murkowski, one of the two Republican no votes, said part of her reason was the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. She wasn't alone — Sen. Thom Tillis had pushed Blanche to meet with Epstein survivors, and Blanche finally did in July.

It did not go well. Afterward, survivor Annie Farmer said in a July 16 statement that she found Blanche "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors," and survivors urged senators to block him.

Blanche was the public face of the Epstein files at the Justice Department. He is the official who personally sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell in a Florida courthouse for two days of interviews on July 24 and 25, 2025, after granting her limited immunity so she could talk without fear of being prosecuted over what she said. She told him she never saw Trump act inappropriately. Shortly afterward she was moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the Bureau of Prisons has explained why.

Fourteen senators on this site voted to promote him. One of them, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted to keep the Epstein files sealed and then took checks from two men named in them.

The fourteen we track

Ashley Moody of Florida spent six years as her state's attorney general before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Senate. She knows better than almost anyone in that chamber what it means for a chief law enforcement officer to be independent of the politician above him. She sits on the Judiciary Committee. She voted yes.

Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee also sits on Judiciary, and is running for governor while she does it.

Darline Graham of South Carolina has been a senator since July 14. Nobody elected her — Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to the seat left vacant by the death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, on Trump's public recommendation. She has never held elected office in her life. She now sits on the Judiciary Committee, and the first bill she put her name on was one that would make it harder for millions of citizens to register to vote. Now she's voted to confirm the president's defense lawyer as attorney general.

Jon Husted of Ohio spent the same week writing a brand-new photo ID bill that the Senate voted on nineteen minutes after it confirmed Blanche. His state lost more Obamacare coverage than any other in the country this year.

Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is running for governor while still holding his Senate seat.

And the rest voted yes without much comment: Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Jim Risch of Idaho, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

The three who talked tough and voted yes anyway

The best part — if you like this sort of thing — is who made the noise.

Cornyn and Tillis spent two weeks holding the nomination hostage. Cornyn accused the Justice Department of having "stonewalled" him and said flatly, "They've simply refused to cooperate." Tillis said the fund was "an insult to the police officers and the people that defended us on January the 6th." Then he said, "It's done. It's been rescinded, and I am satisfied." Both of them voted yes.

Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was the decisive vote. He listed the problems himself — the $1.8 billion fund, the tax immunity deal, the prosecutions of Trump's political opponents — and then said: "This is not a referendum on President Trump. It is a decision regarding Mr. Blanche in very specific circumstances."

Here's what those three men have in common. All of them are on their way out. Cornyn lost his May primary to Ken Paxton after Trump endorsed against him. Tillis isn't running again. Cassidy lost his primary this year to a Trump-backed challenger.

The only Republicans who used any leverage at all were the three with nothing left to lose. And they gave it away for two letters.

That tells you what the other 47 yes votes were really about.

What they did with the night

The Senate pulled an all-nighter to get this done. In the same session it confirmed Blanche, passed a stopgap funding bill, and held a pre-dawn vote on a photo ID requirement for voting. Then everyone went home for a month of recess.

They did not lower anyone's grocery bill. They did not lower anyone's rent, or premiums, or electric bill.

They stayed up until 4:17 in the morning to hand the Justice Department to the president's defense attorney, and then they left town.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told them what the moment was before they voted:

"If there is ever a moment in history when we need an Attorney General above reproach, who is clearly dedicated to ending corruption, even at the highest level of our government, it's right now."

Fifty of them heard that and voted for the president's defense attorney anyway.

We deserve better.

Source

Alanna Durkin Richer and Lisa Mascaro, "Todd Blanche narrowly confirmed as Trump's attorney general in overnight vote" (Associated Press via PBS News, August 8, 2026). Additional reporting from the Associated Press, NPR, and The Hill. Roll call from Senate vote #230. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.

Ashley Hinson Refused to Sign the Epstein Petition. Billionaires Named in the Files Wrote Her Checks.

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 19:12:00 +0000

For two months in the fall of 2025, a piece of paper sat in the U.S. House waiting for one more name.

It was a discharge petition — a tool that lets rank-and-file members go around their own leadership and force a vote. This one would force the Justice Department to hand over its Epstein files. It needed 218 signatures. It had 217.

Ashley Hinson would not be the 218th.

Now the Daily Beast reports something else that was happening during those same weeks: Hinson and her PACs took nearly $90,000 from billionaires whose names appear in the Epstein files, according to Federal Election Commission records. About $30,500 of it came in during the stretch when she was helping keep those files sealed.

Four Republicans signed. She wasn't one of them.

You don't have to take anyone's word for who signed. The House Clerk publishes the list. Go look at Discharge Petition No. 9, filed by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie on September 2, 2025.

Out of 219 House Republicans, exactly four put their names on it: Massie, Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. That's it. Everyone else, including Hinson, stayed off.

Hinson had already explained why. On a weekly press call in July 2025, she said Massie "is approaching this in the wrong way, and he's doing it in a way that we give the floor to Democrats, which is not how we should be doing business."

Read that again. Her objection wasn't that the files should stay secret. Her objection was that releasing them would be a bad look for her party.

She added that she trusted the administration to handle it: "I do trust President Trump here and (Attorney General) Pam Bondi to do the right thing, and (FBI Director) Kash Patel to do the right thing at the FBI."

That trust had already been tested. That same month, the Justice Department put out a memo saying there was no Epstein "client list" and that it would release nothing further. When the files finally did come out, they were full of names — including names of people who fund Ashley Hinson's campaigns.

The petition only got its 218th signature on November 12, 2025, when Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in and signed it on the House floor. Not because Hinson changed her mind.

Who was writing the checks

Here's who gave, and how often their names show up in the files:

Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone co-founder worth more than $42 billion. He gave Hinson $26,500 across her campaigns and PACs — including $7,000 on September 10, 2025, days after Massie filed the petition. Schwarzman's name appears in the files 23 times, including an email where Epstein called him "terrific." Schwarzman never emailed Epstein directly and faces no accusations of wrongdoing.
Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, worth more than $7 billion. He gave $7,000 on September 25, 2025 — while the petition was still stuck at 217. His name appears 389 times, and he kept a documented relationship with Epstein long after Epstein's 2008 sex-crime conviction.
Howard Lutnick, now Trump's Commerce Secretary. He gave Hinson's House campaigns more than $12,000 in 2021 and 2023. His name appears at least 141 times, and there is a photograph of him with Epstein on Epstein's private island in 2012 — seven years after Lutnick has said he cut off all contact. Lutnick testified before the House Oversight Committee about his ties to Epstein and denied any wrongdoing.

Others on the donor list named in the files include billionaires Henry Kravis (55 mentions), John Catsimatidis (70 mentions, plus a spot in Epstein's "little black book"), and Howard Lorber. None of those three corresponded with Epstein in the files, and none of them face accusations of misconduct.

That's worth saying plainly, because the accurate version of this story is bad enough without stretching it.

Then she voted yes — after it stopped mattering

Once Grijalva's signature broke the logjam, the vote couldn't be stopped. It came to the floor on November 18, 2025.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act passed 427 to 1. Hinson voted Aye. So did nearly every member of the House — you can look up her name in the roll call yourself.

Iowa's three other House Republicans did the same thing: Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, and Randy Feenstra all refused to sign the petition, then all voted for the bill once refusing was no longer an option.

That's the tell. When her signature could have actually forced the files open, she withheld it. When the outcome was already decided and a "no" vote would have been a headline, she voted yes.

You don't get credit for jumping on a train that's already left the station.

This fits the pattern

Blackstone was already on Hinson's list of top donors before any of this — it's right there in her OpenSecrets contributor profile, alongside Koch Industries, Valero Energy, and Comcast. She sits on the House Appropriations Committee, the panel that decides where federal money goes. That makes her worth a lot to people with money.

And she has been clear about who she's going to Washington for. When she launched her Senate campaign, she said she wants to be "President Trump's top ally in the United States Senate." Not Iowa's top ally.

Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Drew Myers put it this way to the Daily Beast:

"She's firmly on the side of the Epstein class and fought harder to prevent the release of the Epstein files than she has for the Iowans who are struggling from rising prices at the gas pump and grocery store."

Nobody has to say anything out loud

Let's be careful about what this is and isn't.

There is no evidence anyone paid Ashley Hinson to keep her name off that petition. Billionaires like Schwarzman and Kravis write checks to Republicans up and down the ballot. This is just what their giving calendar looks like.

The problem isn't a bribe. The problem is that a system like this doesn't need one.

A congresswoman refuses to sign the petition that would open a set of records. Some of the wealthiest people named in those records fund her campaign. Nobody has to make a phone call. Nobody has to make an offer. The money and the incentives do all the talking, right out in the open, on public forms anybody can read.

Hinson is now asking Iowans to promote her to the U.S. Senate. She's running against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek in a race the Daily Beast describes as tight.

Before Iowans vote, it's fair to ask a simple question: when Ashley Hinson had one chance to do something that would have cost her donors and helped Epstein's victims, which way did she go?

She had two months to decide. She chose the checks.

We deserve better.

Source

Vic Verbalaitis, "Exclusive: Iowa GOP Senate Candidate Ashley Hinson Faces Fresh Heat Over Epstein Pen Pal Campaign Donor Cash", The Daily Beast, July 30, 2026. Photo illustration by The Daily Beast. Signature list and roll call independently verified against the House Clerk's discharge petition record and Roll Call 289.

Dan Sullivan Voted to Keep the Epstein Files Sealed. Then Two Men Named in Them Wrote Him Checks.

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:50:00 +0000

On September 10, 2025, the Senate had a chance to force the Justice Department to release everything it has on Jeffrey Epstein.

Chuck Schumer offered an amendment to the defense bill directing the Attorney General to make the Epstein documents public. Republican leadership moved to table it — the procedural way of killing something without voting on it directly.

The motion to table passed 51-49. Two Republicans, Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, broke ranks and voted to let the amendment live.

Dan Sullivan voted to table. So did Lisa Murkowski. You can read the roll call yourself — the vote is right there, one name per line.

Two votes the other way and the files would be public.

Then the checks came

Months later, money showed up in Sullivan's campaign accounts from two men whose names are in the Epstein record.

Henry Kravis — the billionaire co-founder of KKR — gave $8,500 to Sullivan Victory on April 1, 2026. That's not a claim from a press release; it's in the FEC's own database. Kravis appears in Epstein's so-called "little black book" of contacts. No one has ever alleged wrongdoing by Kravis in connection with the Epstein case, and that's worth stating plainly.

Howard Lorber gave $693 to Alaskans for Dan Sullivan on June 28, 2026, according to campaign finance records reviewed by MeidasTouch. Lorber's connection is more direct than a name in a book. He shows up in the released Epstein files by email.

In one of them, Epstein pitched an unidentified assistant on assembling a "war council" of Trump allies to handle the fallout from the Mueller investigation:

"I assume you are still close to Ivanka. If so, there are a few of his heavy-hitter friends that would like to help (me not included, of course). I think a war council. Schwartzman, Wynn, Rudy, Lorber, Lefrak, you, Barrack, should be called in to give suggestions."

In a November 2016 email, Epstein called Lorber a "best bet." An October 2017 email chain with the subject line "Jeffrey Epstein" has an associate saying he'd call Lorber to check whether something was "ok with JEE."

Every one of those exchanges came after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from a girl under 18.

Nobody is saying the vote was bought

Let's be precise, because precision matters here and the loose version of this story is worse than the accurate one.

There is no evidence anyone paid Dan Sullivan to vote a particular way. Kravis gives to a great many Republicans — the same FEC records show April 2026 checks to committees supporting Tom Cotton, Jon Husted, Ashley Moody, and others. This is what a big donor's calendar looks like.

The problem isn't a bribe. The problem is a system that works exactly like this in the open.

A senator votes to keep a set of documents sealed. Some of the people named in those documents are extremely wealthy. Those people fund the party that keeps them sealed. Nobody has to say anything to anybody. The incentives do the talking.

Sullivan's own funding profile shows how thoroughly he lives in that world: 76% of his money comes from outside Alaska, from donors like Goldman Sachs, Apollo Global Management, and General Atomics. Alaska sends him to Washington. New York and Washington pay for the campaign.

He is hard to ask about it

Sullivan is not shy about talking. He is shy about being asked.

In March 2025, Anchorage constituents organized a town hall. It was well attended, aside from the elected officials, who didn't come. That's the pattern: he'll take the meeting when it's a fundraiser, not when it's a room full of Alaskans with questions.

The simple version

Sullivan had a chance to make the files public. He voted to kill it, and the motion to kill it carried by two votes.

Afterward, money came in from two men who appear in the very records he voted to keep sealed. That is not illegal. It is not even unusual.

That's the part Alaskans should sit with. It's not unusual — and Sullivan is asking for a third term anyway.

Source

Troy Matthews, "Dan Sullivan Received Campaign Donations From Epstein Associates After Voting to Block Release of the Files", MeidasTouch News, July 31, 2026. Roll call and donation figures independently checked against Senate.gov and FEC records.

Tom Emmer Loves His Committee's Investigations — Except the One About Epstein

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:34:00 +0000

When a politician has a megaphone, watch what they choose to shout about — and what they choose to whisper.

Tom Emmer is the House Majority Whip, the third-ranking Republican in Congress and one of the loudest voices in Minnesota politics. Lately he's been blasting one investigation by the House Oversight Committee as loudly as he can. But there's a second investigation by the exact same committee that he won't say a word about. It happens to be the one involving Jeffrey Epstein — and the one his own son is running.

The megaphone, turned all the way up

Earlier this month, the Oversight Committee released findings on fraud in Minnesota's safety-net programs. Emmer pounced. The day the report dropped, he posted that Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison "looked the other way while taxpayers were robbed blind by fraudsters," and said the committee's "BOMBSHELL investigation proves this." The next day, he wrote that the report "proves they knew about rampant fraud in our state for years."

That's a politician using his platform exactly the way you'd expect — hammering the opposing party with his committee's work. The Minnesota case at the center of it, the Feeding Our Future scheme, is real and ugly: the Justice Department calls it the largest pandemic-relief fraud it has ever charged, and its ringleader was sentenced in May to more than 41 years in prison.

The megaphone, switched off

Here's the part Emmer doesn't advertise. The Oversight Committee — the same one whose Minnesota report he can't stop promoting — is also investigating Jeffrey Epstein. As part of that work, it has questioned Attorney General Pam Bondi and taken a deposition from former President Bill Clinton.

On that investigation, Emmer has said essentially nothing.

He isn't totally silent on the word "Epstein." He was among the 427 House members who voted to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and he shared an Oversight post claiming Democrats got "caught red-handed spreading a hoax about President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein." But notice the pattern: in every case, the framing casts Trump as the victim. What's missing from Emmer's feed is any mention of the committee's actual Epstein work — the Bondi questioning, the Clinton deposition, the substance of the probe.

Why he might want to look away

There's a reason the silence is so glaring.

The person who led off the questioning of both Bondi and Clinton is Jack Emmer — the committee's chief counsel for investigations, and Tom Emmer's 34-year-old son. When the committee's work aligns with the White House's wishes, Tom Emmer amplifies it within hours; he even publicly credited other committee work his son helped staff. But on the Epstein depositions his son personally ran, the proud father has nothing to say.

The timing tells the story. The Minnesota Reformer notes that a New York Times Sunday Magazine excerpt from a new book by reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan describes how the Trump White House treated the Epstein files as a political crisis to be managed — with senior officials, including Vice President JD Vance, reportedly meeting in the Situation Room to contain the fallout. So when the same committee produced findings the White House wanted contained, the third-ranking House Republican went quiet.

To be clear about what this is and isn't: there's no violation of federal anti-nepotism law here. Tom Emmer doesn't sit on or chair the Oversight Committee — Rep. James Comer does, and Comer's committee, not Emmer, employs Emmer's son. Emmer was only waived onto the panel temporarily to question the Minnesota officials. So this isn't a legal scandal. It's something simpler: a powerful lawmaker deciding, over and over, that some of his own committee's oversight is worth trumpeting and some of it is best left in the dark.

Oversight isn't supposed to work like that

The whole idea of congressional oversight is that it follows the facts wherever they lead — not just to your opponents. Emmer clearly understands the power of his platform; he uses it constantly. That's exactly why his selective silence matters. When the target is Walz and Ellison, it's a "BOMBSHELL." When the target might embarrass the president — and the questioning is run by his own son — it's not worth a single post.

Minnesotans deserve a Whip who backs real accountability even when it's inconvenient for his side. Instead, on the biggest accountability story in Washington, Tom Emmer picked up his megaphone, looked at the Epstein files, and set it down.

We deserve better.

Source

This story is based on commentary and reporting by Chad Maschke for the Minnesota Reformer. Photo by Andrew Harnik / Getty Images.