Following U.S. first lady Melania Trump's statement denying any relationship to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on April 9, 2026, social media users spread a collage of images they claimed authentically showed the two together.
The images purported to show Trump kissing Epstein on the mouth and face. One image appeared to show her pole dancing for Epstein; another showed the two of them smiling and embracing. The last image in the collage looked like Epstein kissing her.
The black-and-white collage circulated on Threads, X, Facebook and LinkedIn. Some versions referenced a real quote from the first lady's public address: "I've never been friends with Epstein." Snopes readers sent in the collage to ask for verification.
However, all of the images in the collage were either generated by artificial intelligence or digitally edited through other means — and Snopes has previously debunked many of them. As such, we have rated the collage as fake.
Legitimate images of Epstein with the Trumps do exist. For example, in 2023, we confirmed the authenticity of an image showing President Donald Trump and Melania Trump, then known as Melania Knauss, alongside Epstein and his close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in Epstein's crimes.
Here's how we know each image from the collage is a digital creation:
Trump and Epstein kissing
A reverse image search of the top left image shown in the collage — of Melania Trump and Epstein kissing — returned a full-color version without any cropping. In the version of the image without cropping, a four-pointed star, the logo for Google's AI tool, Gemini, was visible in the bottom right corner.
Gemini also confirmed that "all or part of this content was edited or generated with Google AI."
Trump pole dancing
In a February 2026 fact check, Snopes determined the image of the first lady apparently pole dancing for Epstein was fake. The earliest example of the image we found came from the Instagram page of British artist Alison Jackson, who creates "convincingly realistic photographs, films and sculpture depicting celebrities doing things in private," per her website.
Jackson's Instagram post included a disclaimer that read: "Fictional image. No factual claims implied."
(Instagram user @alisonjacksonartist)
For a previous story about a fake image of Donald Trump and Epstein getting their feet washed by a girl, a spokesperson for Jackson told us: "The image was created by Alison Jackson, she uses lookalikes of the public figures and makes them look realistic, she also uses Ai – it's a bit of both."
Kissing Epstein's cheek
Snopes first debunked the image of Melania Trump kissing Epstein on the cheek (on the left side of the collage) in December 2025. We rated the image as fake based on inconsistencies in Epstein's facial features compared with credible images of him. No reputable news outlets had reported on the image as real in 2025. A follow-up reverse image search in April 2026 also found no news outlets reporting on the picture as authentic.
In August 2025, Lead Stories, another fact-checking website, reported on the same picture in connection with a YouTube video thumbnail. Lead Stories also confirmed that the image was fake and likely AI-generated. The video appears to no longer be available.
Trump and Epstein embracing
The image of Trump and Epstein embracing, in the middle of the collage, was either heavily edited or generated using artificial intelligence.
Epstein's face in the image did not match credible pictures of Epstein. For example, Epstein's chin in the fake image was much longer than his actual chin, and his real teeth were more crooked than those in the fake image.
A reverse image search determined that no reputable news outlets have reported on the image as real. The same search found a full-color version of the fake image.
(X user @mjfree/Rick Friedman via Getty Images, illustrated by Snopes)
Running the color version through AI detection tools, including Hive Moderation and ZeroGPT, determined that the picture was highly likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content. (These types of tools are fallible. Snopes cautions against using them to determine the authenticity of an image without other supporting evidence.)
Epstein kissing Trump's cheek
In April 2026, Snopes debunked a claim that French President Emmanuel Macron posted the image of Epstein apparently kissing Trump. In that fact check, we also determined that the picture — shown at the bottom or the collage — originated as a satirical post from a self-identified "obsessive memeist" named Tom Adelsbach. The caption of Adelsbach's post said, "DISCLAIMER: Digitally altered photo #parody."
Adelsbach's account posts numerous AI-generated political memes and acknowledges his use of AI on a page that allows supporters to tip him. In the original meme Adelsbach posted, the bottom-right corner has a serial number similar to those used by the Department of Justice to categorize Epstein files released to the public.
The DOJ's files include an image with the same serial number (see Page 51 of file EFTA01648070.pdf). In that image, Epstein is puckering his lips while grabbing someone whose face is redacted. As such, it appears that Adelsbach manipulated this authentic image released by the DOJ.
For more on Melania Trump and Epstein, Snopes previously published a collection of rumors related to the pair.