After Ashley Moody Epstein Probe, Donors Linked to Him Poured Money Into her Senate Campaign

Then-Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody looks on as Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference at the Lakeland, Florida Police Department in 2021. Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

During her tenure as Florida Attorney General, Sen. Ashley Moody led an investigation into the work-release program that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to engage in sexual encounters while imprisoned for soliciting underage girls for prostitution. After nearly two years of probing, she concluded no wrongdoing. Now Moody, a Republican, is up for reelection in a tight race for a Florida Senate seat against Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon, and she has received $50,000 from individuals connected to Epstein.

Douglas Band, a former Bill Clinton staffer who communicated with Ghislaine Maxwell to schedule meetings between the former president and Jeffrey Epstein, donated $14,000 to Moody’s victory fund on April 15. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and John Catsimatidis, two billionaires who appeared respectively in call logs and address books in the Epstein files, donated the next most to Moody’s fund at $12,000 and $10,000 a pop. Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, another billionaire who maintained a relationship with Epstein even after the disgraced financier had been jailed for solicitation of prostitution from a minor, and Ronald Lauder, the billionaire heir to the Estée Lauder companies who appeared in the Epstein files for meetings and joint purchasing agreements with Epstein, both chipped in $7,000.

Moody announced her probe on August 6, 2019, four days before Epstein’s death and shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered the transfer of an internal investigation being conducted by Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw to the Florida Department Of Law Enforcement. Two days later on August 8, Moody immediately found that the work release had not been authorized by a judge. (“We have not been able to locate any administrative order, nothing in the transcript, that would indicate that the judge was aware of ordered work release in this particular case,” she told local media.) Yet it took almost two years for her office to finish investigating how law enforcement allowed Epstein’s work release to go forward.

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NBC News has since substantiated claims that Epstein abused the Palm Beach work-release program, which allowed eligible inmates to leave detention for up to 16 hours a day, multiple days a week, to resume working their jobs or completing approved projects. They reported in June 2026 that, “At least five women say they had sexual encounters with Epstein while he was participating in the jail’s now-defunct work-release program, according to records released this year by the Justice Department as part of the agency’s Epstein investigation. The encounters occurred at his office in West Palm Beach and in a car parked outside the county jail, the women said in FBI interviews.”

Nevertheless, Moody’s FDLE investigation wrapped up in May 2021, concluding no noticeable misconduct by the sheriff’s office or state prosecutors in Palm Beach County in granting Epstein said work release. Upon the conclusion of the investigation, former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan criticized its lack of search warrants, subpoenas, or a grand jury. “It appears the FDLE solely depended upon the cooperation and memory of those involved,” Kaplan told West Palm Beach TV .

Sarah Kellen, a former aide to Epstein, testified before the House Oversight Committee that Epstein paid Palm Beach County law enforcement officers for preferential treatment, though she did not specify how much.

Ashley Moody’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Florida’s U.S. Senate race has only recently come into play electorally as President Donald Trump’s abysmal approval ratings have dragged downballot GOP candidates underwater across the country. Amid his unpopular war in Iran, the president has seen his favorability in the sunshine state shift from +9 at the start of his second term to -14 with three weeks until election day, according to Civiqs.

Meanwhile, Nixon, an insurgent now endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, overcame a roughly 17:1 fundraising disadvantage in the Democratic primary to upset the establishment’s pick, Alex Vindman, on August 18. Since then, polls have shown Nixon closing within as few as 2 percentage points of Moody.

Sanders recently announced four joint Fighting Oligarchy campaign events set to take place with Nixon on October 17 and 18 in Tampa, Melbourne, Gainesville, and Tallahassee. An ascendant national figure, Nixon has campaigned on a bold progressive agenda that includes Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee with inflation adjusted wages, universal childcare, and a national rent freeze and moratorium on evictions.

Moody, on the other hand, cast the deciding vote in July 2025 to table an NDAA amendment that would have directed the Attorney General to “make publicly available documents related to Jeffrey Epstein,” and has at every turn defended the Trump administration’s illegal war in Iran, voting 12 times against War Powers Resolutions.

Fast forward one year to July 2026, Moody positioned herself as a key defender of Attorney General Todd Blanche, a key architect of the Epstein files coverup, during his confirmation hearing to succeed Pam Bondi at the DOJ. While Democrats highlighted his role in burying the files and past as Trump’s personal attorney, Moody listed awards Blanche received while he “prosecuted drug traffickers and violent criminals” as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

Trump has returned the favor for her loyalty, offering Moody his “Complete and Total Endorsement” and saying the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill “probably wouldn’t have happened” without her. Moody accepted Trump’s endorsement in stride, saying she’s “incredibly honored” to have his support.