The Epstein Four

A year ago this week, four House Republicans refused to take their names off a petition that their party’s leaders and the White House wanted dead. By January, none of them is expected to still hold a seat in Congress.

On Nov. 12, 2025, newly sworn-in Rep. Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, added the 218th signature to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s discharge petition, the procedural tool that forced a House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Every House Democrat had signed. Only four Republicans did: Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina. Speaker Mike Johnson had urged his conference to stay away from the petition, and had any one of the four dropped off before the final signature, the effort would have stalled.

It did not stall. Six days later, after President Donald Trump stopped opposing the bill and told Republicans to back it, the House passed it 427-1. Trump signed it on Nov. 19, 2025, and the Justice Department released its first batch of records on Dec. 19. Here is what has happened to each of the four since.

Thomas Massie: the most expensive House primary on record

Massie, the Northern Kentucky Republican who has represented the 4th District since 2012, lost his May 19 primary to Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, by roughly 10,000 votes, about 55% to 45%. Gallrein then won the seat on Nov. 3 with about 54% of the vote, so Massie’s term ends in January.

The race set a national record. Louisville Public Media, reviewing federal filings, counted about $37 million in spending by the campaigns and allied super PACs, far above the previous House primary record of roughly $25 million set in New York in 2024. Groups working against Massie included MAGA KY, a super PAC formed by Trump campaign advisers that reported $7.4 million in spending; the AIPAC-funded United Democracy Project, at about $4.1 million; and the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund, at about $3.9 million.

The money behind those groups came largely from outside Kentucky. According to those filings as reported, hedge fund manager Paul Singer gave a combined $3 million to MAGA KY and an allied PAC, Miriam Adelson gave $750,000 directly to MAGA KY, and hedge fund manager John Paulson gave a combined $410,000. Adelson, the casino magnate who gave $106 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2024, was born in Israel and holds U.S. and Israeli citizenship. The Network found no reporting that Singer or Paulson holds Israeli citizenship. Massie’s own side was not broke: his campaign and friendly PACs spent more than $18 million.

Massie framed the race in blunt terms days before the vote. “Three billionaires from outside of Kentucky have funneled millions of dollars in here. They’re trying to buy a seat,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” calling Adelson, Singer and the pro-Israel groups “all part of the Israeli lobby.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene: resigned after a break with Trump

Greene announced on Nov. 21, 2025, that she would resign, and she left the House on Jan. 5, 2026. Her split with Trump had come a week earlier, when he withdrew his support, branded her a “traitor” and attacked her online for her stand on the Epstein files.

Greene has said publicly that threats were part of her decision. In her resignation statement she wrote that standing up for women “raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States.” In a later interview with FOX 5 Atlanta, she described “a pipe bomb threat on my home” and “direct death threats on my own son,” which she tied to Trump’s rhetoric. She also said she did not want her district to endure “a hurtful and hateful primary” backed by the president. She has not said anyone ordered her to resign.

Nancy Mace: gave up her seat, then lost the governor’s race

Mace did not seek reelection to the House and instead ran for governor of South Carolina. She failed to make the June Republican runoff, which Attorney General Alan Wilson went on to win before winning the governorship on Nov. 3. Throughout the campaign she defended her vote to release the files.

Her open Charleston-area seat flipped. Democrat Nancy Lacore edged Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt by about 3,300 votes out of more than 326,000 cast, and Honeycutt conceded on Nov. 4.

Lauren Boebert: pressured, vetoed, then defeated

Boebert was the member the administration worked hardest to peel off. On the day the petition reached 218, she met in the White House Situation Room with top administration officials; CNN reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were expected to attend, and Axios reported that officials tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade her to remove her name. Boebert told CNN afterward that Trump did not pressure her to withdraw.

On Dec. 30, 2025, Trump vetoed the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, a Boebert bill that had passed both chambers without objection and would have eased repayment terms for a pipeline meant to bring clean drinking water to about 50,000 people in southeastern Colorado. Trump cited cost to taxpayers. Boebert said she hoped the veto had “nothing to do with political retaliation,” and Massie later said on Tucker Carlson’s podcast that it was payback for the petition. A majority of House Republicans voted in January to sustain the veto.

In May, after Boebert campaigned for Massie, Trump wrote that “anybody who can be that dumb deserves a good Primary fight.” No challenger appeared: Boebert won her June 30 primary unopposed. In the general election, CNN projected on Nov. 9 that she had lost to Democrat Eileen Laubacher, a retired Navy rear admiral who led 48.8% to 47.9% with about 98% of the vote counted and has declared victory. The Associated Press had not called the race as of Monday evening, and Boebert’s campaign has said it is “investigating some very unusual voting patterns.”

What the four have in common

Each outcome has its own causes. Greene chose to leave. Mace left her seat to seek a higher office. Boebert fell in a midterm that swept Democrats into control of both chambers. Massie was beaten by Republican primary voters after Trump endorsed his opponent. But all four took the same risk on the same petition, and, barring a reversal in Colorado’s count, all four will be out of the House when the 120th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. Trump has not been accused of any crime in connection with Epstein.

Commentary: Kacee Allen

The following section is the opinion of Kacee Allen, founder of the Kacee Allen Network.

I call them the Epstein Four, and I think what happened to them tells you exactly who runs Washington. Four Republicans put their names on a petition to release files about a convicted sex offender and the powerful people around him. A year later, every one of them is on the way out.

Look at Kentucky first. My view is that Thomas Massie was not beaten by the people of the 4th District so much as by a flood of money from billionaires who have no stake in Northern Kentucky. When Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and John Paulson can pour millions into one House primary, the message to every member of Congress is plain: cross the donor class, or cross the pro-Israel lobby, and they will spend whatever it takes to remove you. I believe those donors put foreign and financial interests ahead of Kentucky’s.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was, in my view, the second-loudest America First voice in that conference after Massie, and when she walked away, it looked to me like she had been pushed out through threats and pressure. She has told us herself that the threats against her family were part of it.

Lauren Boebert sat in the Situation Room and kept her name on the petition. Weeks later her district lost a water bill that had passed Congress without a single objection. You can believe the timing was a coincidence. I do not. And when the next election came, the president she had backed for years had already told the world she deserved a primary.

Nancy Mace ran for governor and lost, and honestly, I think she would have had a tough road keeping her seat in a year like this anyway. But she still stood with the survivors when it counted.

Here is my bottom line. I believe President Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republican leadership spent months protecting what I call the Epstein class: the wealthy and connected people who never seem to face consequences. If you stand up to that class, to the Israel lobby or to the big donors who bankroll this town, you may win the vote, but sooner or later you lose your seat. That is not how a republic is supposed to work, and Kentucky deserves elections decided by Kentuckians, not by billionaires who never have to answer to us.

Photo credits

The images in this article are a composite of separate photos; these people were not photographed together. Lauren Boebert: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Massie: House Creative Services, public domain. Marjorie Taylor Greene: U.S. House of Representatives official portrait, public domain. Nancy Mace: Office of Rep. Nancy Mace, public domain. Jeffrey Epstein: State of Florida 2013 booking photo, public domain. Donald Trump: Daniel Torok, official White House portrait, public domain. Mike Johnson: U.S. House official portrait, public domain. FBI memo page: U.S. Department of Justice, public domain. All via Wikimedia Commons. The Network cropped the photos and added the labels, color treatment and layout; the composite is shared under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Editor’s note: The Kacee Allen Network checked the petition timeline, House vote and bill signing against CNN, Axios, AP and the House Clerk’s record; election results against AP, NBC News, CNN as reported by Newsweek, Colorado Newsline, the Post and Courier and WLKY; spending and donor totals against Louisville Public Media’s review of FEC filings and Politico; Greene’s reasons against her resignation statement and her FOX 5 Atlanta interview; and the Arkansas Valley Conduit veto against Fox News and NJ.com. Several details were corrected during fact-checking: Boebert did not lose a primary (she won it unopposed and is projected to have lost the general election); the reporting describes administration officials, not Trump personally, meeting her in the Situation Room, and the water veto came after she kept her name on the petition rather than as a stated advance threat; the petition reached 218 signatures on Nov. 12, 2025; and Israeli citizenship is stated only for Adelson, where it is documented. No interviews were conducted for this story. The commentary section is clearly labeled opinion.