By Ashe Short
Published: July 21, 2026 10:56pm
Two Democratic Senate candidates have received backlash for accepting donations from a Democrat megadonor with former ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
James Talarico and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D- Ga., who is running for re-election, have both received donations from Reid Hoffman, a billionaire who has admitted to spending time on Epstein’s Caribbean island, Fox News reported. Hoffman donated $11.5 million to a Talarico-aligned super PAC called Lone Star Rising, according to The Texas Tribune. Hoffman donated $7,000 to Ossoff’s campaign, the maximum legal amount.
"Democrats like Jon Ossoff and James Talarico vilify corporate billionaires in one breath and accept their cash in the next," a GOP operative who declined to be named told Fox News Digital. They’re fueling the same ‘money in politics’ gravy train they claim to oppose, he said.
Both Talarico and Ossoff have referred to the “Epstein class” when discussing billionaires. Talarico, for example, has said in an interview, “The Epstein Class has no place in Texas,” while Ossoff said in a news statement earlier this year that “MAGA […] is the Epstein class, ruling our country.”
In February, documents made public by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice showed Hoffman’s ties to Epstein, who killed himself after being held without bail in New York City on federal sex trafficking charges. The released documents did not allege criminal wrongdoing by Hoffman, but showed him planning visits to multiple Epstein properties, Just the News previously reported. One of the memos, from 2014, revealed that Hoffman spent the night at Epstein’s Manhattan town house, where many of the disgraced financier’s crimes were alleged to have taken place. Another memo suggested Hoffman was planning to spend a weekend at Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico and to travel to Little St. James, Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/two-democrat-candidates-take-cash-epstein-linked-megadonor-after-slamming