Flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat the spread of misinformation, posts on social media claim to show Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., kissing a child on Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the private Caribbean island once owned by the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. This claim is false.
Examples of these posts -- which juxtapose an image of Schumer with a photo of a man and child kissing and carry the caption, “Chuck Schumer kissing this child on Epstein island!!! The VEIL has lifted!” -- can be found here , here and here . Text above the two images reads, “No wonder Democrats wanted to impeach Trump.”
Epstein pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges involving dozens of underage girls at his mansions in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida, following his arrest on July 6, 2019. He had escaped federal prosecution by pleading guilty in 2008 to Florida state prostitution charges, an agreement now widely considered too lenient. Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Manhattan Detention Complex on Aug. 10, 2019.
Dubbed “Pedophile Island” and “Orgy Island” by some locals and media (here), the island, according to Epstein’s accusers, was where Epstein and his associates trafficked and sexually abused young women and girls (here).
The social media posts purporting to show Schumer on the island speak to a core tenet of the “big tent” conspiracy theory QAnon – that President Trump is secretly fighting a cabal of child-sex predators that includes prominent Democrats, Hollywood elites and “deep state” allies (here).
The posts falsely suggest that Democrats in Congress sought to remove Trump from office for fear that he would expose their alleged ties to human trafficking. In reality, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives charged the president in December 2019 with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, accusing him of pressuring a foreign government, Ukraine's, to help him win re-election (here).
In response to the same claim about Schumer circulating online this summer, PolitiFact published a fact check article on July 18 (here). According to PolitiFact, a spokesperson for Schumer said that it was "absolutely not" the Democratic senator from New York in the image of the man and child kissing.
On Aug. 17, Lead Stories fact-checked the claim by comparing Schumer’s hairline with that of the man in the image (here). Four days later, Lead Stories published an update, reporting that the man in the photo had contacted them.
According to Lead Stories, “He is the father of the child in the photo. Lead Stories saw other family photos where he appears with his wife and daughter. There is no question the man who contacted us is the man in the photo or that they are a family. For their privacy they will not be identified. He is distraught that these pictures are being circulated with such defamatory captions and requests that people take them down.”
Senator Schumer does not appear in flight logs for Epstein’s fleet of private planes, referred to in the media as the “Lolita Express” (here).
Copies of these flight logs can be seen online, uploaded by Gawker.com here and by Factcheck.org here . Business Insider has also provided a searchable database of every known flight made by Jeffrey Epstein's private planes, available here to subscribers.
Reuters could not find Schumer’s name or initials in the flight log documents, nor could it find any evidence of Schumer ever visiting Epstein’s Little St. James.
It is true that Epstein donated at least $7000 to Schumer’s political campaigns between 1992 and 1997, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan and non-profit think tank that tracks the effects of money and lobbying on elections and public policy (here).
The donations were reported (here , here) after Schumer told fellow lawmakers that then-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta should resign for his role in the controversial plea deal he struck with Epstein in 2008 (here).
Schumer decided to donate an amount equivalent to Epstein’s contributions to organizations combatting sex trafficking and violence against women (here , here ).
VERDICT
False. The man in the image kissing a child is not Senator Chuck Schumer. Reuters could not find evidence of Schumer ever visiting Epstein’s private Caribbean island.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.