An image shows American Vice President Kamala Harris with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
This picture has been edited. The original photograph showed Ms Harris with her husband Douglas Emhoff. Mr Emhoff’s face has been edited out and replaced with Epstein’s.
An altered image appearing to show American Vice President Kamala Harris with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is circulating on social media. In recent days, President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the US election race and endorsed Ms Harris to take his place as the Democratic Party’s nominee.
The picture appears to show Ms Harris smiling and standing next to Epstein. But the image has been edited to include Epstein’s face.
Using Google Lens, Full Fact was able to find the same photo being debunked almost three years ago by AFP.
The original photo, which is much clearer than the edited version, shows Ms Harris with her husband, Douglas Emhoff, at a black tie event in 2015.
Mr Emhoff’s face has been replaced with a custody image of Epstein shared by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department in 2006.
Full Fact has debunked other posts attempting to link Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, to high profile figures such as the former president, and Republican nominee for the upcoming US election, Donald Trump.
False or misleading claims about politicians have the potential to harm individuals, groups and democratic processes and institutions.
Altered and manipulated videos and images can cause misinformation to spread widely online. It’s important to consider whether something is genuine before sharing. Our guides to spotting misleading images and videos can help you to do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the original image has been edited to include Jeffrey Epstein’s face.
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