Is a photo that shows Stormy Daniels standing with Donald and Melania Trump authentic? No, that's not true: The image posted on social media is a combination of two photos -- one of the Trumps, with a pregnant Melania, at an event in 2005 and the other of Daniels at a different event posing for photos in 2006. The three did not appear in a photo together.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on May 12, 2024. It began:
A Bible salesman, his pregnant wife, and the woman he never ever ever ever met, but paid her $130,000 for something they never ever ever ever did.....
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed May 15 18:16:34 2024 UTC)
The image of Melania standing between her husband, former President Donald Trump, and Stormy Daniels, an adult film star with whom he is accused of having an affair, is a doctored image.
A Google search for keywords resulted in a picture (archived here) of Daniels in the black dress at the AVN Awards in 2006 as this image shows:
(Source: Wikimedia commons screenshot taken on Wed May 15 18:18:11 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search with the photo of the Trumps resulted in multiple photos of the pair at the 22nd Annual Night of Stars Gala in New York City on October 27, 2005. Multiple news agencies photographed the couple arriving at the event but Lead Stories could not determine the exact match for the photo used.
One image on the photo agency Alamy website (archived here) showed Donald and Melania Trump standing next to his daughter, Ivanka Trump, at the event in a pose similar to the image used in the doctored photo. The image was published in the Daily Mail (archived here) in 2016 and credited to the photo agency Shutterstock:
(Source: Daily Mail website screenshot taken on Wed May 15 18:25:54 2024 UTC)
A search of the Shutterstock website for keywords returned multiple images of Melania and Donald Trump at the event.
At the time this was written, the claim had previously been reviewed by multiple fact checking organizations, including by Snopes in 2018.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Donald Trump can be found here, and Lead Stories articles on claims about Stormy Daniels can be found here.
