In November 2025, Democrats on the U.S. House Oversight Committee released emails in which the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of trafficking minors for sex, mentioned President Donald Trump. Epstein wrote in one email to a journalist that "Trump 'knew about the girls.'"
That news led to at least one image circulating online that purported to show Trump kissing a young girl. Similar images and videos — sometimes including Epstein — circulated earlier in 2025, after a public fallout between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Trump during which Musk posted on X that Trump appeared in the so-called Epstein files. Snopes also debunked one such image dating back to January 2024.
Though the images we fact-checked below are all fake, there are several authentic images of Trump and Epstein together. "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy," Trump said in an interview with New York magazine in 2002. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
Fabricated images such as these have fueled rumors that Trump has engaged in sexual misconduct involving children. Though a jury found Trump liable for the sexual abuse of author E. Jean Carroll in May 2023 — a decision Trump was appealing, as of this writing — the original accusations against Trump of committing sexual crimes against children from 2016 are dubious.
