Fact Check: Is viral image of Trump with young Ivanka standing next to Jeffrey Epstein real?

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: An image fea­tur­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, his daugh­ter Ivan­ka, and con­vict­ed sex offend­er Jef­frey Epstein has once again resur­faced on social media, fuel­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion.

The pic­ture depicts Trump kiss­ing a young Ivan­ka on the cheek while Epstein appears in the fore­ground. 

Claim: Photo of Donald and Ivanka Trump with Jeffrey Epstein resurfaces online

Social media users are shar­ing an image claim­ing it proves a close asso­ci­a­tion between Trump, Ivan­ka, and Epstein. The viral pic­ture shows Trump kiss­ing Ivan­ka as a child at an event, while Epstein appears to be stand­ing near­by.

The pic­ture depict­ed Don­ald Trump kiss­ing a young Ivan­ka on the cheek while Epstein appeared in the fore­ground (@MeeBrockfox/Facebook)

A pho­to cir­cu­lat­ing wide­ly on Face­book, X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter), Insta­gram, and Bluesky shows text read­ing, “I bet he didn’t think this pic­ture was still around!!! My my my! Mr Trump we want answers!” 

Fact Check: Viral image of Trump, Ivanka, and Jeffrey Epstein is not real

Fact-check­ers con­firm that the image is a fab­ri­cat­ed com­pos­ite cre­at­ed by merg­ing two unre­lat­ed pho­tographs tak­en years apart.

The authen­tic image of Trump and Ivan­ka dates back to Octo­ber 1993, when the pair attend­ed the grand open­ing of the Harley-David­son Cafe in New York City. The pho­to of Epstein, by con­trast, comes from May 2005 at the launch of Radar mag­a­zine at a New York hotel.

While the two pic­tures are gen­uine sep­a­rate­ly, they were nev­er tak­en togeth­er and have been dig­i­tal­ly altered to cre­ate the mis­lead­ing impres­sion that Epstein was present dur­ing Trump’s out­ing with his daugh­ter.

Inter­est­ing­ly, although the viral image itself is fake, archival pho­tographs con­firm that Epstein did attend the 1993 Harley David­son Cafe launch, mean­ing he was indeed at the same event as Trump that year, although not in the moment cap­tured by the doc­tored pic­ture.

Epstein, who was arrest­ed on sex traf­fick­ing charges, died in a New York prison cell in 2019 while await­ing tri­al. His long­stand­ing ties to influ­en­tial polit­i­cal and busi­ness fig­ures have con­tin­ued to spark con­tro­ver­sy and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, often ampli­fied by manip­u­lat­ed pho­tos and mis­lead­ing posts online.

Conclusion

The viral image show­ing Don­ald Trump, Ivan­ka Trump, and Jef­frey Epstein togeth­er is fake. It is a dig­i­tal com­pos­ite of two unre­lat­ed pho­tos from 1993 and 2005. While Epstein and Trump did cross paths on sev­er­al occa­sions, this par­tic­u­lar pho­to­graph is not gen­uine.