Did House Democrats release photos showing Jeffrey Epstein with a girl in a green skirt who also appears bound and gagged in another image? No, that's not true: These images have both been digitally edited. The original image of Epstein from 2005 showed him posing with Ghislaine Maxwell. It has been in the Getty Images library since 2016. The image of the bound and gagged child is digitally edited and has been edited in additional hoaxes. It may show a real victim of child abduction and trafficking and has been online since at least 2006.
The altered images appear in a video (archived here) published on TikTok by @ftcgbv on Dec. 6, 2025. It opened:
House Democrats have just released a series of never-before-seen photos and videos from Jeffrey Epstein's private island.
"We are releasing these photos and videos to ensure public transparency in our investigation and to help piece together the full picture of Epstein's horrific crimes. We won't stop fighting until we deliver justice for the survivors," Democrats wrote in a statement that accompanied the release.
#JeffreyEpstein #EpsteinFiles #EpsteinIsland #viral
This is a screenshot of the video's opening scene:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from tiktok.com/@ftcgbv/video/7580638742990441783)
The scope of this fact check will only be the two images including a girl in a green skirt in the above screenshot. These are fake, have been digitally edited, and were not among the photos recently made public.
The House Democrats on the Oversight Committee published a press release (archived here) on Dec. 3, 2025 about the release of never-before-seen photos and videos from Epstein's Island. The announcement includes a link to the image files in Dropbox. Ranking Member Robert Garcia was quoted:
These new images are a disturbing look into the world of Jeffrey Epstein and his island. We are releasing these photos and videos to ensure public transparency in our investigation and to help piece together the full picture of Epstein's horrific crimes. We won't stop fighting until we deliver justice for the survivors.
It's time for President Trump to release all the files, now.
The picture of Jeffrey Epstein holding the little girl (below right) is a digital fake. The little girl has been added to the image and Ghislaine Maxwell has been taken out. The original photo (below left) shows Epstein and Maxwell at a concert. It has appeared in The New York Times and ABC News. It was taken on March 16, 2005 and uploaded to the stock and editorial photography website gettyimages.com on Aug. 19, 2016. Epstein had his arm over Maxwell's shoulder. The photo is captioned:
NEW YORK CITY, NY - MARCH 15: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend de Grisogono Sponsors The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series Benefitting Wall Street Rising, with a Performance by Rod Stewart at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Note: The image in the TikTok video is very grainy. Lead Stories used a higher resolution copy of the fake image (below right) for the composite image below. It was found as the thumbnail image of a YouTube video.
(Image Source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from nytimes.com/2019/07/15/us/ghislaine-maxwell-epstein.html and i.ytimg.com/vi/RY7UGSImuXI/maxresdefault.jpg.)
The image of the child bound and gagged on the bed has been edited. The original photo showed a boy wearing navy blue sweat pants. This photo has been online since at least 2006 when it was published to the website johnnygosch.com. Johnny Gosch was a 12-year-old newspaper boy who went missing from West Des Moines, Iowa in the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 1982. Gosch was one of the first missing children to appear on a milk carton. In Aug. 2006, Johnny's mother Noreen Gosch received a package with some images she believes show her son shortly after he was abducted. She posted these on johnnygosch.com (archived here). Investigators discovered that these images were already posted on a pedophile website with photos of at least 83 boys tied and gagged. She wrote:
He was still wearing the clothing he had on the day he was taken.
The composite image below shows the original photo (blur added) of the boy in blue sweatpants, the digitally edited version of the girl with a green skirt, and yet another edited version with a girl in a blue satin dress. The blue dress version (archived here) appeared in a July 23, 2024 post on X. It was coupled with an edited photo of Jacob Rothschild (original photo here) holding a little girl in a blue dress -- just as the green skirt version had been paired with an edited photo of Epstein carrying a girl in a green skirt.
(Image Source: Lead Stories composite image with x.com/XelorVortex/status/1815904855568838833 and i.ytimg.com/vi/RY7UGSImuXI/maxresdefault.jpg and x.com/SabrinaGal182/status/1815628646654341282.)
