In mid-July 2025, a photo (archived) appeared on social media sites claiming to show U.S. President Donald Trump with Attorney General Pam Bondi and now-deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The image, which appeared on platforms including Instagram, Threads, YouTube and X, came to prominence a little more than a week after the Justice Department, led by Bondi, published a memo denying the existence of documents related to Epstein, including a supposed list of high-profile pedophile clients he would be able to blackmail.
In the following days, members of the public as well as Democratic legislators demanded the release of the "Epstein files," a list of documents detailing and related to Epstein's activities, while Trump was publicly attempting to distance himself from the situation.
As for the image shared across social media, it was real — meaning not edited or generated by artificial intelligence — but miscaptioned: The woman in the photo was Belgian model Ingrid Seynhaeve, not Bondi.
Snopes found the original image through Getty Images, where it featured the following caption:
American businessman and ex-president Donald Trump, Belgian model Ingrid Seynhaeve, and American businessman Jeffrey Epstein attend the Victoria's Secret "Angels" party on April 28, 1997 in New York City.
Details present on Getty Images' website revealed it was uploaded from the archive on May 20, 2024, explaining why the caption described Trump as an "ex-president."
Epstein, who died in his jail cell in 2019 about a month after being arrested on sex-trafficking charges, has become a focal point for many conspiracy theories. While the official report called his death a suicide, many people believe he was murdered in order to prevent him from revealing the names of prominent people who knew about or participated in his criminal activities, which involved sexually abusing minors.
Snopes has covered a number of topics involving Epstein, including the claim that Trump once called him a "terrific guy" and the rumor that Trump's name was in Epstein's "black book."