The recent unveiling of Jeffrey Epstein's celebrity connections has led to a string of misleading and false claims regarding public figures the late financier allegedly associated with.
Several names were revealed after documents from a lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, an alleged trafficking victim, against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, were unsealed on Wednesday. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted in December 2021 of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse underage girls. An individual named in the documents does not mean they have committed wrongdoing, and most had been mentioned previously in legal proceedings or news accounts.
The unsealing has inspired lists of bogus connections that have continued to dupe social media, with a new one of famous faces including The Rock, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Miley Cyrus, attracting attention this week.
The Claim
A post on X, formerly Twitter, by user Qmum/@Nancy023922191, posted on January 7, 2024, viewed more than 1.8 million times, said: "Maxwell was arrested for Supplying Children to Pedophiles
- Sean Penn
- The Rock
- Schwarzenegger
- Lebron James
- Meryl Streep
- Alec Baldwin
- Chrissy Teigen & John Legend
- Lady Gaga
- Robert De Niro
- Miley Cyrus
- Stephen King
- Jay Z & Beyoncé
- Alyssa Milano
- Snoop Dog"
The Facts
While this post doesn't specify what connection these people have to Maxwell or Epstein, almost no one in this list had known connections to them.
Bogus Epstein lists have become almost something of a cliche in misinformation circles, drawing on the immense interest surrounding Epstein and the cache of actual celebrity connections Epstein had.
Al Gore, Kamala Harris, Jimmy Kimmel are among just some of public figures who have been falsely linked to Epstein or Maxwell. Newsweek has published a full list of the names mentioned in the documents unsealed in the Virginia Giuffre lawsuit.
This list is completely bogus. None of these names appear in the flight logs published by Gawker in 2015, nor were any of these names mentioned in the unsealed Ghislaine Maxwell lawsuit documents released on Wednesday January 3.
Only one name appeared in Epstein's "Black Book," the financier's phonebook contact list: Alec Baldwin. Baldwin was among 1,510 people in the book published again by Gawker in 2015.
The rest of the names have not appeared anywhere else in any of the court documents or in others released in connection with Maxwell or Epstein.
Among the other misinformation shared online, screenshots of fake court transcripts related to Epstein have also flooded the internet, often falsely accusing celebrities of appearing on the list of Epstein's former associates.
One fake transcript reviewed by Newsweek wrongly accused late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel of being mentioned during a court testimony related to Epstein. Another fake transcript that was repeatedly shared online falsely accused Stephen Hawking, the late theoretical physicist, of frequently visiting Epstein's private island for "pleasure."
Hawking, who died in 2018, was listed in the unsealed documents but was only included in a 2015 email that Epstein wrote, which proposed a reward to be paid to anyone who could debunk a baseless claim about the physicist at the time, as reported by the Associated Press.
The Ruling
False.
The names in this list were not in the recent unsealed court documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein. One person, Alec Baldwin, was mentioned in another document drop; Baldwin was in Epstein's "Black Book," published nearly nine years ago, among 1,500 other people in that book. His name was not mentioned in other papers or documents.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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