40 Epstein-Tied Billionaires Have Injected $1.6B Into US Elections, Report Finds

Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation. Billionaires with ties to Jeffrey Epstein have spent nearly $1.6 billion on influencing U.S. elections since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashed a deluge of such spending on the electoral system, a new report finds, demonstrating the vast power over politics held by the so-called Epstein class. Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund reveals in a new report Thursday that 40 billionaires and billionaire families with ties to Epstein have injected over $1.57 billion into U.S. elections since 2010. According to the group’s analysis, 84 percent of this spending, or over $1.3 billion, went toward Republicans or conservative causes. This is despite a roughly even split between Republicans and Democrats among the billionaires, which include people who formerly donated to the Clinton family. Only 7 percent went toward Democrats and aligned causes, while the remaining money went toward lobbying efforts that target members of both parties like AI and Israel. The report includes spending from people like President Donald Trump, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Elon Musk, current U.S. ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, Jared Kushner, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, among many other prominent figures across the business, tech, and sports sectors. The ties to the convicted child sex offender range from mentions in Epstein’s black book or in the Epstein files to extensive business and personal relationships, like Trump’s reported close friendship with Epstein. Trump’s various presidential campaigns and super PACs supporting him have received $282 million from this group of Epstein-connected billionaires, the analysis found. “Our tax and political system is badly broken, and nothing illustrates this more than billionaires with credible ties to Jeffrey Epstein continuing to spend millions to exert their influence on American democracy,” said David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund, in a statement. “We can’t allow billionaires to keep undermining our economy and democracy.” The report suggests that it was, in fact, Epstein’s own personal wealth that helped him to avoid consequences for his sex trafficking and assault for so long. “Jeffrey Epstein himself was worth upwards of $600 million, and that wealth translated into sweetheart deals and avoiding serious jail time for far too long. Now the billionaire class are using their wealth to insulate themselves against the consequences of their actions, the same way Epstein did,” the group wrote. The Adelsons ranked as the top spenders in the group’s analysis, spending $745 million on elections since 2010. All of that went toward conservative causes, the group found. The Adelsons, known for their outspoken support of Israel, are mentioned in the Epstein files “hundreds” of times, the report notes. The next highest spender is Elon Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, who have spent $365 million on elections. Elon Musk infamously spent over $250 million to help get Trump elected in 2024, and has had direct contact numerous times with Epstein. Despite this enormous spending on elections, the money spent by this group in the last 16 years represents only 0.09 percent of their collective wealth. Elon Musk recently became the world’s first-ever trillionaire after the opening of SpaceX as a public company last month. Important Message: Please Read For 25 years, Truthout has survived by publishing impactful investigative journalism and analysis; distributing full editions 365 days a year; and building a community of readers who support us with small, hard-earned donations. Eighty percent of our $3 million yearly budget comes from small donors alone. Of those, 8,000 readers support us with monthly donations. Back in 2018, when Facebook decided to suppress the circulation of posts made by organizations, thereby cutting readers off from seeing many articles shared by the news organizations they had intentionally decided to follow, Truthout’s total traffic declined by 40 percent, as nearly all of our traffic from that platform disappeared. As Google plans to roll out its new AI search bar, providing shoddy AI summaries instead of directing readers to our site, the consequences promise to be even more explosive. Google Search is our single largest source of traffic; it’s the route by which 27 percent of our readers find us. If even half of that 27 percent disappears, it will have a devastating impact on our journalism. The entire journalism ecosystem will shoulder this blow, particularly independent publishers and news sites that depend on traffic and aren’t bankrolled by large corporations. If you can support Truthout with a donation today, you can help us resist the inevitability of Big Tech’s AI takeover. Please give today.