Does a real photo show Melania Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell posing with three young women whose faces have been redacted? No, that's not true: This fake photo was made to look like a Polaroid photo from 1998. The high resolution fake image was featured as a clickbait thumbnail for a YouTube video, with black redactions as if it originated from the large group of redacted Epstein Files released by the Department of Justice. Maxwell and Trump have appeared together in several real photographs, but this image is not one of them.
The fake image was cropped and appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @ninaburleigh on Feb. 4, 2026. It is captioned:
Hello from your First Lady.
This is the blurry image included in the post:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/ninaburleigh/status/2019172744521220153.)
Extensive reverse image searches with Google Lens did not turn up any matching images with clear sourcing aside from social media reposts. Lead Stories conducted searches for this image in entirety, as well as for various key elements which could have been used in a digital composite. More than 3.5 million Epstein files have been released so far by the Department of Justice. No journalist or member of the public has documented discovering this photo among them with a file number or link.
A Google image search result points to a YouTube video (archived here) titled, "Melania's email is in the Epstein files and it's bad.." The scope of this fact check will not extend to the video itself, only that this video's thumbnail is the first time the image appeared online, on Jan. 30, 2026. The image does not appear in the body of the video and is not discussed. The following day the thumbnail appeared on Reddit (archived here) when the video was posted there. The thumbnail image for the video only shows in the Google search results or as a preview -- once the link is clicked, the viewer will not see the image again.
Lead Stories was able to extract the full size image from the video (archived here). It is not blurry like the image posted on X. The fake image has a white border mimicking a Polaroid photo, with a handwritten marker notation that says: "Mar-a-Lago '98" (pictured below right).
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from i.ytimg.com/vi/F90J8yv63oM/maxresdefault.jpg.)
This fake Polaroid was paired with another fake image to fill out the rectangular thumbnail dimension. The other image (above left) shows a group of women wearing satin dresses with their faces redacted. In the center of the grouping are two women with unredacted faces who also resemble Melania Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell. The hairstyles and clothing in the two images are not consistent, as if taken at different events. The hands and arms of the posing women appear to have glitches typical of AI-generated images.
One Feb. 5, 2026 post (archived here) on X by @drhossamsamy65 presented the fake image with an incorrect authentication. He said it was from a Dolce & Gabbana event. The caption @drhossamsamy65 published with the picture reads:
🇺🇸 Dolce & Gabbana Opening. New York City. November 11, 2002.
Melania Knauss and Ghislaine Maxwell. Side by side. Surrounded by young women.
This photo is authenticated by Getty Images. That same year, Melania emailed Maxwell about a New York Magazine profile on Jeffrey Epstein. She called it a "nice story." She signed it "Love, Melania."
Today, a reporter asked the First Lady about her relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. Her aides shut it down immediately.
An FBI witness says Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The files prove they stayed close. And now they don't want her answering questions‼️
#EpsteinFiles
But the Getty catalogue does not in fact authenticate the picture.
The photo agency's images of the Dolce & Gabbana opening (archived here) in 2002 include Melania Knauss (Melania Trump's maiden name) and Donald Trump photographed together with Ghislaine Maxwell and Naomi Campbell. The photo does not feature any young women resembling those pictured in the @drhossamsamy65 image with redacted faces. Knauss and Maxwell's clothes in the Getty catalogue photos are not those shown in the @drhossamsamy65 image.
