Did the Associated Press publish a fact check titled 'No, Ghislaine Maxwell did not own a horse named "Bubba"' and did it mention her having a golden retriever at the time? No, that's not true: A viral screenshot showing such a headline along with AP's logo and mentioning Jeffrey Epstein is fake. There is no such story on the Associated…
Was Mark Epstein referring to a horse named "Bubba" in an email to his brother Jeffrey Epstein when he wrote "Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba"? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for Mark Epstein told Lead Stories in a phone call the 2018 message was not about a horse. The claim that it was…
Has Ghislaine Maxwell been cleared to leave prison on work release? Here is what we know: On August 1, 2025 the federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to Lead Stories that Maxwell had been moved to the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security all women facility. On August 11, 2025 podcaster Allison Gill published an article based on an…
Did the Federal Bureau of Prisons' inmate search database say that Ghislaine Maxwell was "Not in BOP custody" on Friday, August 1, 2025? Yes, that's true: A search for Maxwell by Lead Stories at 2 p.m. EDT showed a page that indicated she was not in the custody of the federal prison system. A statement from the BOP to Lead…
Is a "newly leaked" photo of Jeffrey Epstein with his arm around Melania Trump authentic as claimed in a social media post? No, that's not true: The original photo was Epstein holding his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, but the image was reversed and Trump's head was digitally added to replace Maxwell's. The photo of Epstein and Maxwell was released by the…
Does a viral video really document Donald Trump pointing at minor girls as they walk by him and Ghislaine Maxwell? No, that's not true: A leading deepfake expert says the video used "motionizing" software, which is widely available, to turn authentic photos into video of something that did not happen. The original version of the cropped photo used to create…
Did President Donald Trump post a 435-word tirade about the public's interest in the canceled investigation into the clients of the dead child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein? No, that's not true: There have been no genuine Trump posts about Epstein on Truth Social since January 2024. The mock-up using Trump's Truth Social profile image was posted by a self-described humor…
Did Gene Hackman vow to "corroborate everything in the Epstein client list" in an X.com post a year before his death? No, that's not true: The user name seen in the purported February 2024 tweet does not exist and there is no indication online the 95-year-old actor was active on the social media platform in recent years. While no "client…
Does an authentic photo show Canadian Liberal Party leadership candidate Mark Carney with Jeffrey Epstein in a pool? No, that's not true: Multiple online artificial intelligence detectors judged that this image was almost certainly AI generated. Lead Stories found no real photos of Carney and Epstein together after consulting online news archives and image searching tools. The image appeared in…
Did Hillary Clinton say that she would leave the U.S. if a rumored Jeffrey Epstein client list was released? No, that's not true: As of December 2, 2024, there is no record of Hillary Clinton having made such an announcement on her social media channels or website, and major media outlets did not report such a quote. Court documents naming…
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