For months, social media users have shared a photograph they claimed shows U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts seated beside Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. The image recirculated in early December 2025 amid renewed scrutiny of Maxwell as a federal judge ordered grand jury records in her case unsealed under a new "Epstein files" transparency law.
One Dec. 8 Threads post (archived) captioned the image: "Why is nobody addressing the fact or seriously looking into the judges being on THE EPSTEIN DOCUMENTS, TAPES, etc. If the had any self respect, they would come clean."
(Threads user @prosperpeteriv)
The same photo circulated across platforms such as X, Threads and Facebook. It also prompted readers to search our site and contact us directly to ask whether the image was genuine.
Although the photo is real, it does not show Roberts. The man pictured with Maxwell is French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who died in prison in 2022. Therefore we've rated it miscaptioned.
Snopes previously fact-checked this photo in 2020, as did Reuters and LeadStories.
What we know about the photo
A reverse-image search using TinEye suggested the photo first appeared on the Daily Mail website on Aug. 19, 2020, where it was captioned: "Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who orchestrated Epstein's social life, can be seen embracing Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model agency boss accused of helping traffic teenage girls."
(TinEye search results)
However, an earlier article published July 30, 2020, by the French newspaper 20 Minutes, also featured the image, alongside another photo from the same scene. The article identified the man as Brunel and noted that the photos "were provided to '20 Minutes.'"
(20 Minutes)
The outlet did not offer any further details about the origin of the photograph. We have reached out to 20 Minutes for clarification and will update this article if we receive additional information.
A nearly identical photo from the scene surfaced in January 2024, when it was included in a batch of unsealed documents from the Giuffre v. Maxwell civil case, in which a victim of Epstein and Maxwell's sexual exploitation, Virginia Giuffre, sued. The image appears in Document 1332-7 (see Page 7 of the PDF) and is captioned: "Defendant with Jean Luc Brunel in 2006," further confirming that the man in the photo is Brunel, not Roberts.
(CourtListener)
We have investigated several images and videos allegedly showing Maxwell with high-profile individuals.
For example, in June 2025, we debunked an image that appeared to show Maxwell massaging the foot of Florida Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the judge who signed off on the warrant allowing the FBI to search U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 for classified documents. We also fact-checked a fake video that allegedly showed Trump pointing at a preteen girl while standing next to Maxwell.
For broader context, check out our collection of 23 rumors we've examined regarding Trump and Epstein's relationship.