Claim:

A photo authentically shows U.S. first lady Melania Trump kissing the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the lips.

Rating:

In April 2026, social media users claimed an image showed an authentic photo of U.S. first lady Melania Trump kissing late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the lips. Some users' comments, including under a popular Threads post (archived), showed they believed the image truly featured Trump and Epstein kissing.

In short, the image was fake and generated with artificial intelligence. Google's diamond-shaped watermark for AI-generated images appears in the lower-right corner. A Google Gemini prompt asking the AI tool to scan for one of Google's SynthID watermarks — an invisible marker only added to Google AI-created images — returned the message, "Analysis of this image indicates that all or part of the content was edited or generated with Google AI."

Users shared the inauthentic picture after Melania Trump's April 9, 2026, statement distancing herself from Epstein and his associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Regarding fake photos, Melania Trump said, "Numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been circulating on social media for years now. Be cautious about what you believe. These images and stories are completely false."

Snopes emailed a representative for the first lady to ask if she wished to comment on this specific fake image, but did not hear back by the time of publication.

A reverse image search for the fake photo of Melania Trump kissing Epstein on the lips only located reposts on social media — including on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived) — as opposed to trustworthy sources.

(@rondicki/Threads)

We have yet to confirm the original post of the fake image or the user who created it. No news media outlets had published the photo, which would have been widely reported if it were authentic.

While the fake image didn't contain major signs of AI, such as extra fingers or illegible letters, some minor details point to its inauthenticity. These include the awkward alignment of Melania Trump's and Epstein's lips and the man in the red tie on the right, whose distinct facial expression resembles that of other AI-generated images.

For further reading, we previously reported on a collage of fake images featuring Melania Trump and Epstein.

"A Timeline of the Jeffrey Epstein Investigation and the Fight to Make the Government's Files Public." PBS News, The Associated Press, 6 Feb. 2026, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-timeline-of-the-jeffrey-epstein-investigation-and-the-fight-to-make-the-governments-files-public.

"First Lady Melania Trump's Statement." The White House, 9 Apr. 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/04/first-lady-melania-trump-statement/.

Martínez, A. "Ghislaine Maxwell Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Overturn Her Conviction." NPR, 29 July 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/07/29/nx-s1-5482993/ghislaine-maxwell-asks-u-s-supreme-court-to-overturn-her-conviction.

"SynthID." Google DeepMind, https://deepmind.google/models/synthid/.

Thompson, Stuart A. "These Tools Say They Can Spot A.I. Fakes. Do They Really Work?" The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/technology/ai-detection-generated-photos-video.html.

"What to Know about the Justice Department's Jeffrey Epstein Files." The Associated Press, 20 Nov. 2025, https://apnews.com/video/what-to-know-about-the-justice-departments-jeffrey-epstein-files-365db927447844868521ba18862cbcff.