Image of Joe Biden with Jeffrey Epstein is edited

The viral image is not real; it was made by combining two photographs. One of Jeffrey Epstein and Pepe Fanjul, and another of Joe Biden and Ezra Friedlander.

An image purportedly showing the late American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein posing with U.S. President Joe Biden is going viral on social media. Users who share the image, questioning why the full list of Epstein’s clients has not been made public.

Hundreds of pages of court filings related to a lawsuit against Ghislane Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator in a scheme to exploit and sexually abuse minors, were released recently. Those records contain the names of dozens of celebrities, politicians, and other public figures.

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Fact Check- 

A reverse image search of the image on Google led us to the American magazine Vanity Fair published the original photo of Epstein in a 2019 report, crediting Getty Images and the Patrick McMullan Company. The article features the same image of Epstein and Fanjul, noting it was taken during a film release in 2005.

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An art market website named Artnet also included the same image in a 2020 article titled “Jeffrey Epstein and billionaire collector Pepe Fanjul.” News sites like The New York Post and Today have used a cropped version of this image that only shows Epstein.

Next, we ran a search for Biden’s image, and found that it was sourced from The Friedlander Group’s website, a boutique political firm based in New York. The image had been featured in an album which carried photos of its CEO, Ezra Friedlander with several world leaders, including then-US senator Joe Biden. 

So, we can understand that the viral image combines the two separate images shown above. 

Conclusion- 

Fact Crescendo found that the viral image to be Altered. It was made by combining two photographs. One of Jeffrey Epstein and Pepe Fanjul, and another of Joe Biden and Ezra Friedlander.