Did White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempt to explain the presence of Donald Trump's last name in the newly released Epstein files by saying that it was "another person with the same name", not a reference to Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States? No, that's not true: The rumor originated from a self-described satire website that warned its readers that its content "is not intended in any way to be presented as fact". Lead Stories found no credible sources stating that Leavitt actually said the words in question.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) published on X on November 15, 2025. It showed a picture of what seemed to be an image of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on one side and a quote on the other side:
It's not President Trump who is in the Epstein emails. It is another person with the same name.
The caption continued:
Yes ... she really did say this.
This is what the viral image from the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/TonyShepherd)
Three days earlier, this claim was published (archived here) on a website whose copyright section (archived here) read:
NewsThump is an online satirical newspaper published at newsthump.com by Thump Publishing Limited... Please note that all content on this site is satire or parody, and not intended in any way to be presented as fact.
The NewsTrump About page (archived here) -- still available online but removed from the site's landing page, as of this writing -- continued:
NewsThump is a satirical and spoof news website, taking a daily swipe at current affairs from the UK and around the world...
So, for clarification - If you read a story on here, then you are NOT supposed to believe it. It has been completely made up purely for entertainment purposes.
On November 12, 2025, when the article was published on the NewsTrump website, the Democrats from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (archived here) announced (archived here) the release of additional emails from the estate of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Republicans released more files (archived here) documenting his electronic communications.
On the same day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press conference. Among other things, she took questions from reporters about Epstein's emails, but she did not say the words falsely attributed to her in the post reviewed in this fact check. At the 16:28 mark, Leavitt said:
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong. And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep.
Talking to journalists, she also described (archived here) the publication of documents as a selective leak aimed at creating "a fake narrative to smear President Trump". Still, Leavitt did not dispute that the Trump mentioned in the emails was the same person as the man occupying the White House in the fall of 2025 when the most recent cache of the Epstein files was released.
Searches across Google News and Yahoo News (archived here) yielded no results suggesting otherwise.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page on Google News)
