An unofficial website about the Republican midterm convention in Dallas redirected visitors Friday to the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein records.
Search results showed pages on gopdallas2026.com titled “The Dallas 2026 Host Committee,” “Plan Your Visit,” “Vendor Guide” and “Get Your Credential.” The pages looked like the event site but carried a disclaimer that the site was independent and not affiliated with the Republican National Committee.
The convention’s official website is gopconvention.com. It was working Friday and identifies itself as paid for by the Republican National Committee, which is organizing the event Wednesday and Thursday at the American Airlines Center.
The redirect was on a separately registered domain, www.gopdallas2026.com. During repeated checks Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, gopdallas2026.com sent visitors to the Justice Department’s “Epstein Library,” a collection of records related to the convicted sex trafficker.
It is not known who created the look-alike site, who added the redirect, or whether the same person or group controlled the domain the whole time.
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On Sept. 1, OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics, linked to gopdallas2026.com in a report on convention financing. Those links show the address had circulated as a source of information. They do not make the site official.
Public records show the domain was registered through GoDaddy on July 7, a week after President Donald Trump announced the Dallas dates. The owner’s name is hidden behind Domains By Proxy, a common service used to keep a website buyer’s name and contact information out of public registration records. The official gopconvention.com domain dates to August 1998.
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Reporter Jake Lahut, whose work has been published by Wired and New York Magazine, flagged the redirect on X Friday morning. The Lincoln Project, a super PAC founded by former Republicans to oppose Trump, later shared the domain. Its posts did not say whether it had any role in the site. The RNC and the Lincoln Project had not commented Friday afternoon.
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This article originally published at Unofficial website about Dallas GOP convention redirects to Epstein files.