Joe Biden and Barack Obama are not mentioned in the official public Epstein Documents

Context

On January 3 and 4, 2024, sealed court documents from a lawsuit relating to Jeffrey Epstein were publicly released. According to the BBC, the documents are part of a case against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s girlfriend and was jailed for assisting abuse. The court documents mention various names within, including the names of politicians and celebrities. 

Following the release of these documents, a list titled "Epstein’s Island Visitors" resurfaced and was shared on Instagram. An older post was found on Facebook. 

A screenshot of the list shared on social media. Annotations are part of social media post. (Source: Instagram)

Both former U.S. president Barack Obama and incumbent president Joe Biden are mentioned in the list to suggest that they visited Epstein’s island. 

Similar lists of compiled names mentioned to be "Epstein’s Client List" have also surfaced and circulated on social media in the past. These documents list a variety of celebrities and politicians usually to suggest they are complicit in Epstein’s sex crimes. 

In fact

There is no evidence that Biden or Obama visited Epstein’s island and the list lacks credibility. The list is not an official source and does not match any publicly available records. The list also provides no evidence or information about where the names come from. Therefore, it is likely that the list is fabricated to include names that do not appear in official records. There is no evidence to support or suggest that the list shared on Facebook is genuine.

Epstein’s flight logs and the currently released court documents are all publicly available on DocumentCloud, having been uploaded by news organizations. Searching through the documents reveals no mentions of either Biden or Obama. 

Screenshot of one of the 107 pages from the publicly available Epstein Flight Manifests. (Source: Document Cloud/Epstein Flight Manifests 1995 - 2013/Contributed by Insider Inc.)

News website Business Insider also created searchable databases of the names that appeared in both Epstein’s black book and flight records, which show no results for Biden or Obama. Their names do not appear in any publicly released documents. To learn more Logically Facts has reached out to the White House’s press contact and Obama’s press team but at the time of publishing has not heard back. 

However, the recently released court documents do mention the names of several celebrities and public figures such as Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and David Copperfield. However, as stated by the BBC, these documents so far have not unveiled any new major allegations or revelations. The people mentioned in the document have also not necessarily committed sexual crimes or been involved with Epstein’s sex trafficking. Both the black book and flight logs previously made public also list over 1,000 names, including several celebrities and public figures. 

Logically Facts has also fact-checked other recent false claims about celebrity names appearing in publicly released documents related to Epstein. On X (formerly Twitter), a falsified image circulated appearing to show that American television host Jimmy Kimmel had been mentioned in the court documents.

The verdict

There is no evidence that Biden and Obama had ties to Epstein and their names do not appear in any publicly released documents. Additionally, the list lacks credibility and is not an official document. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.