A rumor that circulated online in July 2025 claimed a video showed U.S. President Donald Trump pointing at a preteen girl while standing with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, the former associate of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
For example, on July 12, a Facebook user shared the clip in a post (archived). That post received more than 1.7 million views, as of this writing.
Users also shared the same video, or screenshots from the clip, on Threads (archived), TikTok and X (archived). The Threads post received more than 669,000 views.
(@theresabranford/Threads)
However, the video and screenshots showing Trump, Maxwell and two young girls were not authentic. A user, who Snopes has yet to identify, created the fake clip by prompting an artificial-intelligence tool to generate the video from a genuine, decades-old still image. That photo did not originally show any children.
According to the TinEye.com reverse-image search website, the British tabloid The Sun first published the original picture in a Nov. 23, 2019, article (archived). The caption read, "Party girl Ghislaine with Trump and Ann Jones at a party in NYC in 1997." The article's author credited the picture to Alpha Press.
Users also shared the same authentic photo, showing no children, on Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived).
Other AI videos of Trump, Epstein and Maxwell
The @lackofintelligence0 TikTok account hosts numerous AI-generated clips, similar to the one in the claim, that bring to life photos or still frames from videos showing Donald Trump or Bill Clinton with Epstein and/or Maxwell. For example, one fake video showing Trump with Epstein shows three young girls who did not appear in the original clip. That video, posted on July 15, 2025, received 358,000 views.
Another AI-generated video, also based on either a photo or still frame from a clip, showed Trump pointing at one of two young girls. The video, also posted on July 15, racked up nearly 825,000 views.
Snopes reached out to the user managing the account to ask if they created any of the videos they post with AI tools, or if they simply reposted the clips from elsewhere, and will update this story if we receive more information.
Epstein files in the news
This fake video circulated in summer 2025 at a time of high tensions involving Epstein, in the weeks after tech billionaire and former Trump adviser Elon Musk alleged, without providing evidence, that Trump appears in damning, undisclosed files associated with Epstein's illicit acts.
Then, in early July 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI announced in a memorandum that no Epstein "client list" existed, despite Attorney General Pam Bondi answering a question about the supposed list on Fox News in February 2025, saying it was on her desk for review. After the memo's release, Bondi sought to clarify her remarks from months earlier, claiming her "on my desk" comment simply referenced a general file related to Epstein, and not a "client list."
For further reading, previous fact checks examined related matters, including one claim about a photo showing Maxwell attending Chelsea Clinton's wedding, as well as another matter about pictures captured at the White House featuring Bill Clinton with Epstein and Maxwell. Other articles also investigated various authentic and inauthentic images allegedly showing Trump with Epstein, Maxwell, rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs and young girls, as well as a genuine quote in which Trump once praised Epstein as a "terrific guy."