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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.
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