• A viral photo is new, but the claim is old. It’s connected to a former producer for “The Jerry Springer Show.”

  • Court documents accusing former U.S. President Donald Trump and the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein of raping a 13-year-old girl identified as Katie Johnson are often shared by Trump’s detractors on social media.

  • Though the Johnson cases were dismissed or withdrawn, those claims laid the groundwork for, and lent perceived credibility to, other entirely unsourced rumors that the former president had settled myriad other lawsuits with underage assault victims, pointing to evidence of his alleged “pedophilic disorder.”

  • The Johnson claims, however, originated due to the aggressive efforts of a publicist using the false name Al Taylor. In 2016, investigative reporters tied the Taylor persona to a former “Jerry Springer Show” producer, Norm Lubow. For this story, Lubow confirmed to Snopes he had acted as Taylor and played a role in filing and promoting the Johnson claims.

  • Lubow’s involvement does not disprove that Johnson is a real person, but it does show that those claims were aggressively promoted and aided by someone who has a professional history of using individuals to create fictional salacious drama, and that is a fact both he, and lawyers working for the plaintiff, attempted to downplay or hide.

In September 2024, old claims that former U.S. President Donald Trump committed acts of sexual violence against minors in the 1990s reemerged on social media platforms including X and Reddit, sharing this time alongside a new meme to illustrating the allegation:

[…]

The Bottom Line

Recent claims that new documents prove the validity of the Johnson claims are false, because these documents are from 2016 and have nothing to do with what have become known as the “Epstein docs.”

Viral claims that Trump has a history of sexually assaulting children first emerged with the Johnson lawsuits in 2016. Pictures of court documents related to the case have lent perceived credibility to additional unsourced claims of child abuse that followed, and memes frequently combine the two claims.

Such claims are not new, come with several red flags and originated with an aggressive push by a serial fabulist.

Source: Alex Kasprak, snopes.com/news/2024/09/03/trump-epstein-katie-johnson/