In August 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online, reportedly made by a retired Canadian Airlines pilot, that U.S. President Donald Trump's plane flew to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's island at least 37 times.
Tom Crosby, the Facebook user who first made the claim on Aug. 6, 2025, wrote:
I dont know, but every flight that flies is tracked by ATS. Donald Trump's plane flew to Epstein's island at least 37 times, tracked on radar. You're welcome. All flights anywhere are saved for ten years or more. Retired pilot, Canadian Airlines First Officer Tom Crosby
(Facebook user Tom Crosby)
The claim was popular on Facebook (archived). It also circulated on X (archived), Threads (archived) and Bluesky (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking if the claim was true.
However, we found no evidence to prove Crosby's claim and further research shed doubt on his alleged credentials. Commenters on Crosby's post pointed out that the pin he wore in the attached photo did not look like one belonging to Canadian Airlines, a carrier that Air Canada acquired in 2001. Rather, the pin appeared to come from a pilot's costume from the online retailer Amazon, which also included a white shirt with epaulets like the one Crosby wore.
Commenters also asked for more proof of Crosby's claim, which we also did not find reported in reputable news sources (archived, archived, archived, archived). The claim would have been widely reported if true. Crosby claimed "All flights anywhere are saved for ten years or more," a statement we found difficult to stand up.
We reached out to Crosby to ask for evidence of his claim and former employment with Canadian Airlines. We also reached out to Air Canada to attempt to verify Crosby's claimed former employment. We reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the government agency that regulates civil aviation in the U.S., to verify Crosby's claims about flight record retention. We await replies to our queries.
Trump said in January 2025 he never visited Epstein's island, which prosecutors alleged the financier used to conceal the sex trafficking and abuse of underage victims. Epstein owned the Great St. James and Little St. James islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands before his death in 2019. He used Little St. James to entertain prominent guests from fields spanning politics, entertainment and business and had reportedly intended to develop Great St. James with homes and other amenities.
Crosby's claim departed from reality
Upon inspection, elements of Crosby's claim appeared to discredit the idea that flight records existed to prove that "Donald Trump's plane" flew to Little St. James Island 37 times.
Firstly, the Trump Organization owns multiple planes and helicopters. Trump bought a Boeing 727 in 1997 that had previously flown as part of Trump Shuttle, Trump's short-lived airline. He then replaced the 727 in 2011 with the current Trump Force One. The Trump Organization also owned a Cessna Citation X that it sold in May 2024. Crosby did not specify which aircraft his claim referred to. Additionally, Little St. James Island does not have an airstrip. Rather, an investigation into visitors to the island by the tech magazine WIRED in 2024 found that people arrived on the island either by helicopter or boat after flying to nearby St. Thomas.
It was not possible to prove Crosby's secondary claim about "all flights anywhere" being saved for "ten years or more." Our research found the Department of Transportation required "Certificated air carriers," meaning carriers licensed by the DOT to carry passengers or cargo to retain "System report of airplane movements" for just three years. We did not find specific retention policies for private jets outside records relating to maintenance. "All flights anywhere" was also an extremely broad statement, as individual countries have individual agencies regulating air traffic and record retention.
Live data about the movement of private jets is generally public because the aircraft rely on public systems like air traffic control, lights and runways to operate. Some flight tracking sites combine publicly available data with (sometimes) private data about the ownership of private aircraft to track celebrity jets. However, it was unclear at the time of this writing how long the FAA, the agency that facilitates the collection of this data, retained it.
Though our investigation found no evidence to support Crosby's claim, the profile that posted it appeared to be genuine, meaning it belonged to a real person as opposed to AI slop accounts that spread provably false claims from anonymous platforms.
Crosby previously posted (archived) pictures of himself that showed the same person in the Aug. 6 photo. The account also tagged friends and family members in posts and posted consistently about the same hobbies — usually signs that a real person is behind an account.
Crosby made roughly the same claim multiple times (archived, archived) on Aug. 6, based on local time in Regina, Saskatchewan, where his Facebook profile said he was based. On July 13, Crosby made a similar claim (archived) that "We also have every flight log or boat that went to Epstein's island."
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However, Brett Meiselas, one of the founders of MeidasTouch, said via email on Aug. 9 that Crosby "has never been employed by MeidasTouch in any capacity" and that MeidasTouch had "no affiliation with, endorsement of, or responsibility for the Facebook groups."
"Any claims made by Crosby are his alone and do not represent or reflect MeidasTouch in any way," Meiselas said.
The founders of MeidasTouch News Network previously founded a super PAC by the same name that supported former U.S. President Joe Biden's campaign. The super PAC no longer operates under the MeidasTouch name.
In sum …
Though speculation continues to surround Epstein and Little St. James island, we found no evidence of the specific claim that "Donald Trump's plane" flew to Little St. James Island 37 times.
We found no evidence that Tom Crosby, who posted the claim on
Though we do not have primary evidence in the form of flight logs for Trump's plane at the time, we do know that planes could not land on Little St. James but rather landed on nearby St. Thomas. Whether Trump was on board or not, his plane could not have landed on Little St. James Island, making 37 flights to that destination improbable.
Trump said in January 2025 that he had never visited Epstein's island. There had been no public evidence to the contrary at the time of this writing.