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Sen. Jon Ossoff injected the Epstein files into a potent new political argument during a rally in Atlanta over the weekend.
“This is the Epstein class, ruling our country,” Ossoff said Saturday, noting the extreme wealth of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. “They are the elites they pretend to hate.”
To be clear, there’s no hard evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the files by President Donald Trump, his Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, his former strategist Stephen Bannon and his political benefactor Elon Musk, all of whom make notable appearances in the files.
Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state won in 2024 by Trump, which makes him a contender for most endangered Democrat in the Senate.
So it is interesting that his argument pits everyday voters against the ruling establishment rather than Democrats versus Republicans.
“Trump was supposed to fight for the working class; instead, he’s literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk,” Ossoff said, mentioning perhaps the two most famous billionaire political influencers. Soros gives money to progressive causes. Musk, recently, gives money to conservatives.
Trump made a similarly populist argument at times during his 2024 presidential campaign. In his second inaugural address, which set the tone for his disruptive second term, Trump promised to root out the ruling elite.
”For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair,” Trump said in January 2025.
The president’s family is not exactly trying to hide their efforts to gain wealth alongside their father’s presidency. The New York Times editorial board recently argued in an analysis that Trump has netted more than $1.4 billion since taking office. That includes licensing fees, cryptocurrency ventures and a $400 million jet given to the US by Qatar, but which Trump seems likely to use after leaving office. The $1.4 billion figure, the Times surmised, is likely a vast understatement.
Democrats like Ossoff are borrowing the theme of elites using government to their own advantage.
“We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. Do you remember that?” Ossoff said. “But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich.”
Ossoff’s message, while focusing on Trump’s administration, would also create some collateral damage for Democrats.
Because if there is an Epstein class of monied elites who party on private islands and hold outsized influence over world affairs, it would certainly include Bill Clinton — a Democrat from a previous generation, but also the other future or former president, in addition to Trump, known to have flown on Epstein’s plane.
There is no proof that Clinton did or saw anything illegal, and he has denied any wrongdoing related to his relationship with Epstein. But the photos of the men swimming and hot tubbing were among the first things Trump’s Department of Justice released from its Epstein files late last year. Clinton and his wife Hillary are set to testify in depositions before a congressional committee about Epstein later this month.
That Epstein previously had close ties with both Clinton and Trump is grist for any argument about an Epstein class.
For instance, Lutnick invited Epstein to a “very intimate” fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2015. It’s not clear whether Epstein attended, but he did not contribute to Clinton’s campaign that year. So many wires have been crossed in the decade since. Lutnick is now working for the person who defeated Clinton in that election.
Lutnick is a former neighbor of Epstein’s in New York and the recently released Epstein files show the two men were in contact more than Lutnick previously let on.
Lutnick has not been accused of any illegal activity with regard to Epstein.
“Secretary Lutnick had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing,” a Commerce Department spokesperson told CNN after the files were released.
Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who has been ostracized by Trump for his pursuit of Epstein transparency, has called on Lutnick to resign over his ties to Epstein. He argued the Epstein story should not be a partisan political one.
“The Democrats want to make this about Trump, and the Republicans want to make it about the Clintons. I want to make it about the survivors and getting them justice and transparency,” Massie said Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics.”
There is a strange brew of political views behind the push for the release of the Epstein files. The progressive Democratic congressman Ro Khanna may have coined the term “Epstein class,” and now he wants a larger voice in the party for his role in bringing the issue to the spotlight.
Khanna has argued that there are multiple issues with crossover appeal in which targeting the Epstein class could be useful.
“This is a proof of concept that we need to actually figure out how we bring disaffected MAGA voters into our coalition, that we need to focus much more on railing against a system that has screwed Americans and offering a hopeful message about how we help them, more than just meme-ing against Donald Trump,” Khanna told CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere last year.
Khanna pointed to his work with Massie and also with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican who was previously a noted pusher of conspiracy theories but who is now on the outs with Trump and her party in part because of the Epstein issue. Greene resigned from Congress in January.
