Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend the Batman Forever/R. McDonald Event in New York City on June 13, 1995.
Patrick McMullan | Getty Images
New York federal court documents containing previously hidden names of people associated in some way with the late notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein began being unsealed Wednesday evening.
Many of the more than 150 people named in the civil court filings have previously been publicly disclosed as connected in some way with Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
The documents were filed in connection with a Manhattan federal court lawsuit by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Epstein’s longtime accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Things should start getting unsealed today,” Edward Friedland, the district executive for that court, told CNBC.
The fact that peoples’ names appear in the files does not necessarily mean they engaged in wrongdoing.
Only Epstein and Maxwell have been criminally charged in connection with his longstanding abuse of girls and young women at residences in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere.
Read more CNBC coverage of Jeffrey Epstein cases
Judge Loretta Preska ordered the unsealing in mid-December.
Preska has granted a 30-day extension barring the disclosure of two names, including a woman identified as Doe 107 to review her claim that she faces a risk of physical harm in her home country if her identity is publicly revealed.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence on charges related to recruiting and grooming young women to be abused by Epstein.
Epstein for years had socialized with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as Britain’s Prince Andrew and many other rich and powerful people.
On Tuesday, New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, during an interview on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show,” said in regard to the list of names, “There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel are really hoping that doesn’t come out.”
“I’ll tell you what, if that list comes out, I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle,” Rodgers said.
Kimmel, the host of ABC’s “The Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, quickly fired back at Rodgers in a tweet on the social media site X, suggesting he would sue the football player if he persisted in implying Kimmel had a connection with Epstein.
“Dear A——-: for the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list’ other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality,” Kimmel wrote in the tweet.
“Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”
The names of more than 170 Jeffrey Epstein associates were just unsealed.
Powerful associates like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Glenn Dubin, and Jean Luc Brunel are in the documents.
The list of names also include many of Epstein’s victims.
A federal judge in New York has unsealed the identities of about 170 associates of Jeffrey Epstein as part of a long-running lawsuit between one of his accusers and his sex-trafficking partner Ghislaine Maxwell.
Former President Bill Clinton is perhaps the biggest name disclosed in the documents. He was previously identified as “Doe 36” and was named in dozens of redacted court filings. He didn’t object to unsealing the documents naming him, and the documents aren’t expected to level any new accusations of wrongdoing against him. In one newly unsealed document, an excerpt of a deposition given by Maxwell, Maxwell says that she didn’t know how many times Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet but that she’s “sure” he had a meal while flying on it.
The documents also bring fresh scrutiny to Prince Andrew, a longtime friend of Epstein who said he cut ties with him in 2010. Another Doe whose name is expected to be unredacted is Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s victims who previously said the prince fondled her at his Manhattan mansion.
Many on social media and cable news have speculated that the list contains a comprehensive secret cache of the dead pedophile’s friends — and perhaps descriptions of their lurid acts — but the reality is more complicated.
The names include some powerful people tied to Epstein. But the list also includes the identities of some of his victims, household staff, and other people whose names incidentally came up in the course of a long-running court case between Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Maxwell. In court documents, these people were previously identified as a John or Jane Doe.
One of the Does, for example, previously identified as “J. Doe 005” in court documents, is Carolyn Andriano. Andriano testified against Maxwell at her criminal trial, describing in excruciating detail how she trafficked her to Epstein for sex beginning when she was 14 years old. She said in court that Epstein engaged in sexual activity with her more than 100 times and that he said she was “too old” for him after she turned 18.
Andriano testified using only her first name but gave her full name in an interview with the Daily Mail after the trial. The judge who ordered her name unsealed cited that interview as a reason to now make her name public in the earlier court documents. Andriano, a 36-year-old mother of five, died of an apparent overdose in May, The Daily Beast previously reported.
Out of the more than 170 anonymous Does whose names were scheduled to be unsealed Wednesday, two received extensions allowing them to continue fighting in court to remain anonymous.
One of them, Doe 107, is also one of Epstein’s victims, whose lawyer has argued in court filings that she should be able to keep her privacy. The identity of the other, Doe 110, is not yet clear.
We’ve seen a lot of these records before
Epstein died in a Manhattan federal jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019. Maxwell, one of his ex-girlfriends, was found guilty at trial in late 2021 of trafficking girls to Epstein for sex and sexually abusing some of them herself. She’s serving a 20-year prison sentence in Tallahassee, Florida.
Before the criminal charges, Giuffre brought civil lawsuits against both of them, accusing them of trafficking her. Epstein settled her lawsuit against him in 2009 for $500,000.
The lawsuit against Maxwell, brought later, was settled in 2017, but not after a pitched court battle that included numerous depositions and a discovery process that dredged up emails, flight manifests, news articles, and other records related to Epstein, Maxwell, and Giuffre.
Since the settlement, the civil case has experienced a long afterlife as various parties have sought to unseal the records.
Virginia Roberts holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein began abusing her sexually.Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Alan Dershowitz has sought to get numerous filings unsealed, arguing they would disprove Giuffre’s misconduct accusations against him as well (the two settled a large number of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits against each other and their lawyers in 2022, with Giuffre stating she “may have made a mistake” saying Epstein trafficked her to Dershowitz).
The Miami Herald litigated to unseal documents, some of which were used for its explosive series about how Epstein negotiated a light plea deal on misconduct accusations around 2007 with prosecutors in Florida. The right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Michael Cernovich also hired a lawyer to try to unseal documents that he had posted on social media.
US District Judge Robert Sweet, who originally oversaw Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell, died in 2019, leaving the task of unsealing documents to US District Judge Loretta Preska, who took over the docket.
The process has been a yearslong slog. Preska has weighed different priorities, including the public’s presumption of access to court documents versus the privacy interests of people whose names have come up in litigation.
In December, for example, she ruled that Andriano, Wild, and the Farmer sisters waived any rights to privacy after giving media interviews.
During the efforts to unseal this batch of records, Preska gave the Does a January 1 deadline to raise any new objections to unsealing their identities. Now that that deadline has passed, lawyers for Giuffre and Maxwell have been ordered to confer and then publish unsealed versions of the documents on the court docket.
The Epstein Doe names include some powerful people
Many documents in the Giuffre v. Maxwell lawsuit have been unredacted in different places at different times.
The result is that some documents — which can be as benign as an already-public Daily Mail article about Epstein’s former friend Prince Andrew or as explosive as one of Maxwell’s deposition transcripts — form a sort of puzzle where journalists can put together more complete versions by looking at unredacted portions in different places on the court docket.
That means that journalists have been able to figure out the identities of many Does even before they were officially unsealed.
As Business Insider previously reported, “Doe 183” — whose lawyer fought vociferously in secret court filings to keep his identity under wraps — was connected to Les Wexner, the billionaire former L Brands CEO who gave Epstein billions of dollars in the 1990s and 2000s.
(Wexner has said he wasn’t aware of Epstein’s misdeeds and cut off ties with him when he was convicted of soliciting girls for prostitution in 2007.)
American financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell attend a birthday party for Michael Caine at The Canteen restaurant in Chelsea, London, 17th June 1997.Dave Benett/Getty Images
Many of the Doe parties turned out to be victims. In a previous round of unsealing, Preska disclosed that two of them were Emmy Taylor and Sarah Ransome. It didn’t make sense for their identities to remain private, Preska said, because Taylor has filed lawsuits related to her status as an Epstein victim, and Ransome has written a book about her experience being trafficked by Epstein.
The current unsealing round comes after Preska announced on December 18 that she would unseal the largest batch yet, listing about 50 pages of Does going up to “Doe 187.” Since the identities of some of those Does have been previously made public — including “Doe 183” — that left about 170 Does remaining to name.
Preska said she’d give 14 days from her December 18 ruling to allow any Does to come forward and contest the unsealings. Two have since come forward. A lawyer for Doe 107 said she lives in “a culturally conservative country and lives in fear of her name being released.” Preska has given her until January 22 to provide additional documentation to bolster that argument for privacy.
Another anonymous person, identified as Doe 110, also asked for an extension to file court documents requesting privacy. Preska said Wednesday that she would rule on that “in due course.” It isn’t clear whether Doe 110 is also a victim or someone else affiliated with Epstein.
Among the other unsealed names is Dershowitz (originally “Doe 24”), who has said for years that documents related to him should be made public.
As the Daily Mail previously reported, “Doe 162” was identifiable as Johanna Sjoberg, who gave interviews that corroborated some of Giuffre’s claims about Prince Andrew and said the British royal fondled both of them at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2001. Prince Andrew has denied the allegations and settled a civil sexual misconduct lawsuit Giuffre brought against him in 2022.
Some of the Does appear to be linked to Epstein’s powerful associates but do not necessarily mean they were implicated in wrongdoing.
“Doe 8,” for example is Doug Band, a former aide for Bill Clinton. Preska pointed out that he gave a long interview with Vanity Fair about his interactions with Epstein. In the interview, Band said that he sought to push Epstein out of Clinton’s orbit but that Clinton continued to spend time with him anyway.
On Monday, the deadline for objections to the unsealing of names connected to the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case will pass, allowing the identities of nearly 200 of Epstein’s associates to be confirmed. What do you think?
“Can’t wait to find out who’s on it and who I’ll pretend isn’t.”
Jarrett Brannan, Skydiving Trainer
This Week’s Most Viral News: New Year’s Eve Edition
“Nobody respects people’s privacy anymore.”
Trish Binger, Feline Chiropractor
“And did the court say what day they’ll all mysteriously drop dead?”
Earlier this week, we reported that the names of 177 high-profile associates of the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein are set to be made public in the early days of 2024. Now, the Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre is responding by mocking the “nervous” associates who are about to have their identities revealed.
‘Who’s On The Naughty List?’
“Finally we are hearing members of the US government senators about the need for transparency and a call to arms for accountability!!” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There’s going to be a lot of nervous ppl over Christmas and New Years, 170 to be exact, who’s on the naughty list?”
“This [wouldn’t] be possible without the Honourable Judge Preska,” Giuffre added, referring to Judge Loretta Preska, who ruled that the names must be made public.
Finally we are hearing members of the US government senators about the need for transparency and a call to arms for accountability!! There’s going to be a lot of nervous ppl over Christmas and New Years, 170 to be exact, who’s on the naughty list? This would t be possible without… https://t.co/xVfFfQ0UMH
Giuffre wrote this in response to Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) giving her thoughts on a Fox News report about the Epstein associates being named.
“I’m pleased that this court agrees with my calls for transparency and accountability on Epstein and his associates,” Blackburn wrote. “The American people deserve to know who participated in Epstein’s crimes.”
Blackburn has long been fighting to have the Epstein associates be publicly identified.
“It appears that bad actors within our government are going to great lengths to protect the pedophiles who took Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet,” she wrote on X earlier this month. “I will not stop working to reveal their identities. The American people deserve to know every name on that list.”
It appears that bad actors within our government are going to great lengths to protect the pedophiles who took Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet.
I will not stop working to reveal their identities.
This came after Daily Mail reported that Preska ruled that hundreds of court documents will be unsealed, exposing the names of 177 Epstein associates. While the release date is listed as January 1, the unsealing will likely actually happen the next day, since the first is a national holiday.
Judge Preska wrote “unsealed in full” next to the names of 177 Does who are known to be Epstein’s friends, recruiters, victims and others. She gave the Does fourteen days to object to their documents being unsealed to the public.
The documents pertain to a defamation case that was filed by Giuffre in New York against Epstein’s madam Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre had sued Maxwell for defamation back in 2016, and though the case was settled, the Miami Herald later sued to get the documents made public.
NEW: News Nation reporter Dray Clark reports that a former “president” will be named in the list of 170 Epstein associates that is set to be released in the new year.
“Many of those names that will come out are known & notable, including a former president.”
Epstein allegedly committed suicide in prison in August of 2019 while awaiting trial for various sex crimes. Many have questioned whether he really killed himself, however, as his death was awfully convenient for the countless powerful figures who were rumored to have ties to him. One of these famous figures is the former President Bill Clinton, who allegedly traveled on Epstein’s private jet multiple times and is rumored to have visited his private island.
Maxwell is currently serving a twenty year prison sentence in Florida after she was convicted in 2021 of child trafficking and other crimes connected to Epstein.
Giuffre has long been one of Epstein’s most vocal accusers. In the end, it’s impossible not to agree with her that it will be fascinating to see who is on the “naughty list” when it comes to Epstein.
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An Ivy leaguer, proud conservative millennial, history lover, writer, and lifelong New Englander, James specializes in the intersection of culture and politics.
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A total of 177 high-profile associates of the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein are set to be named publicly in the early days of 2024 thanks to a heroic female judge.
🔥🚨BREAKING NEWS: Over 170 clients on Jeffrey Epstein’s high-profile list will be NAMED in court documents set to be unsealed in January of 2024. pic.twitter.com/s6kq0TkDZQ
Daily Mail reported that Judge Loretta Preska ruled that hundreds of court documents will be unsealed, exposing the names of 177 Epstein associates. While the release date is listed as January 1, the unsealing will likely actually happen the next day, since the first is a national holiday.
Judge Preska wrote “unsealed in full” next to the names of 177 Does who are known to be Epstein’s friends, recruiters, victims and others. She gave the Does fourteen days to object to their documents being unsealed to the public.
The documents pertain to the defamation case filed by Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre in New York against Epstein’s madam Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre had sued Maxwell for defamation back in 2016, and though the case was settled, the Miami Herald later sued to get the documents made public.
One reason that Preska gave for releasing the names is that some of the Does have given interviews to the media, meaning she feels that their identities should not remain private. A few of the Does are housekeepers who worked on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, where he is believed to have committed some of his most heinous sex crimes.
Judge Preska ruled that ten other Does will not have their identities made public because they were minor victims whose names had never been released before.
She decided that in their cases, their privacy outweighs the public’s right to know, finding that releasing their court documents would “disclose sensitive information regarding an alleged minor victim of sexual abuse who has not spoken publicly and who has maintained his or her privacy,” according to The New York Post.
This is conservative Federal District Judge Loretta Preska.
She just ruled to unseal the secret court docs that name 177 people who were involved with Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein allegedly committed suicide in prison in August of 2019 while awaiting trial for various sex crimes. Many have questioned whether he really killed himself, however, as his death was awfully convenient for the countless powerful figures who were rumored to have ties to him. One of these famous figures is the former President Bill Clinton, who allegedly traveled on Epstein’s private jet multiple times and is rumored to have visited his private island.
Maxwell is currently serving a twenty year prison sentence in Florida after she was convicted in 2021 of child trafficking and other crimes connected to Epstein.
“Today’s sentence holds Ghislaine Maxwell accountable for perpetrating heinous crimes against children. This sentence sends a strong message that no one is above the law and it is never too late for justice,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement after her sentencing last year. “We again express our gratitude to Epstein and Maxwell’s victims for their courage in coming forward, in testifying at trial, and in sharing their stories as part of today’s sentencing.”
Reminder: Ghislaine Maxwell is currently in prison serving a 20 year sentence for trafficking children to.. *checks notes*… nobody, apparently?
We can only hope that some of the most powerful figures who took part in Epstein’s unspeakable crimes are among the Does that will be named in 2024. Who do you think could be on the list? Let us know in the comments section.
Now is the time to support and share the sources you trust. The Political Insider ranks #3 on Feedspot’s “100 Best Political Blogs and Websites.”
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Country singer Oliver Anthony made waves across the music industry when his song “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” which contains lyrics that appear to be veiled allusions to QAnon conspiracy theories, recently went viral. The Onion asked right-wingers why they love Anthony’s controversial song so much, and this is what they said.
Ghislaine Maxwell spent years convincing girls as young as 14 to be abused by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Now she’s trying to convince officials at FCI Tallahassee, where she is serving a 20-year sentence, to stop their “unfair treatment.”
According to a report in The Daily Mail, Maxwell has filed 400 complaints since arriving at the federal prison in July.
“Max is the prison Karen. She can file a grievance over anything – she has over 400 of them,” an insider told the British tabloid. “She complains about the food, the bedding, when they cancel temple because of bad weather or are late setting up her legal calls.”
Entrepreneur was unable to verify the source’s information independently.
Maxwell has allegedly griped that the prison’s vegan menu was insufficient for her needs, she demanded that authorities replace her bedding with hypoallergenic pillows — a request that was honored — and she was angered over the lack of access to a particular black hair dye she wanted for an interview with the BBC.
According to the source, she ended up paying $200 to another inmate for the dye.
In one instance, Maxwell almost came to blows with another inmate in the laundry room, after she demanded Maxwell return her temporary shoes.
“That caused a big argument, and Max complained that she felt threatened and refused to go back to the laundry unaccompanied,” the source said. “That’s her in a nutshell. Every aspect of prison life offers an opportunity for her to play the victim. She creates constant drama for staff and inmates alike.”
The guards have supposedly retaliated by canceling a bunch of courses Maxwell teaches about social media marketing and etiquette.
After her conviction, Maxwell’s attorneys requested that she serve her time in FCI Danbury in Connecticut, a prison believed to be the model for the Netflix show “Orange is the New Black.” But The Bureau of Prisons decided that Maxwell be moved to the low-security federal prison in FCI Tallahassee in Florida.
According to the Daily Mail source, Maxwell allegedly wants to be shipped out to Connecticut. “Tallahassee is big. It’s old. It’s ghetto. Max has too many enemies, and she wants out.”
Why Maxwell is in prison
Maxwell, 61, was convicted in 2021 on five counts of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking for her role in grooming and recruiting underage girls who were abused by the late financial advisor Epstein.
The daughter of a wealthy newspaper tycoon, Maxwell used her social status to lure girls into Epstein’s orbit. She would often give the girls gifts and pretend to be a mentor.
“You spotted me at the Mar-a-Lago Hotel in Florida, and you made a choice. You chose to follow me and procure me for Jeffrey Epstein, one of her victims, Virginia Giuffre, told Maxwell in court. “Just hours later, you and he abused me together for the first time. Together, you damaged me physically, mentally, sexually, and emotionally.”
Disgraced former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed in a jailhouse interview with a U.K. broadcaster that a decades-old photograph of Prince Andrew with his sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is “fake.”
Maxwell, a friend to British royalty, is imprisoned in Florida after her conviction and 20-year sentence for helping late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls.
“I don’t believe it’s real for a second.”
EXCLUSIVE: Ghislaine Maxwell claims the photo of Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew is fake.
The prince, 62, has not been criminally charged and has continued to deny the accusations.
But he stepped back from royal duties and was stripped of his military titles amid a public outcry over the reported $16.3 million settlement.
A photograph of Andrew with his arm around Giuffre’s waist and Maxwell standing next to them — said to have been taken in London in 2001 — is seen as crucial to the claim against the prince.
Britain’s Prince Andrew is seen in a file photo with Virginia Giuffre (center) and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Rex Features
But in her U.S. federal prison interview with TalkTV, set to air in the U.K. on Monday evening, Maxwell, who has known him for decades, is adamant the image is not genuine.
“It’s a fake. I don’t believe it’s real for a second, in fact I’m sure it’s not,” she states. “There’s never been an original and further there is no photograph. I’ve only ever seen a photocopy of it.”
The late Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son has insisted he had never met Giuffre, and in a disastrous 2019 BBC interview also appeared to question the photo’s authenticity.
“I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested,” he told the broadcaster at the time. “It’s a photograph of a photograph of a photograph … Nobody can prove whether or not that photograph has been doctored.”
The comments by Maxwell, who is appealing her U.S. conviction, come as British newspapers said Sunday that Andrew will bid to overturn the costly settlement he agreed with Giuffre almost a year ago.
The Sun reported Andrew was consulting U.S. lawyers Andrew Brettler and Blair Berk and hopes to force a retraction or even an apology, which it added could pave the way for a royal rehabilitation.
“I can tell you with confidence that the Prince Andrew team is now considering legal options,” a “well-placed source” told the tabloid.
A representative for Andrew could not immediately be reached for comment.
Under a reported gagging clause in the settlement, Giuffre has been unable to talk publicly about the claim, but that is said to be set to end next month.
In a previous jailhouse interview for a special that aired on Paramount+, Maxwell also cast doubt on the well-known photo — even though Maxwell had previously indicated in an email to Dershowitz that the photo was real.
In that interview, Maxwell said that “meeting Epstein was the greatest mistake of my life.”
“If I could go back today, I would avoid meeting him, and I would say that that would be the greatest mistake I’ve ever made, and I would make different choices for where I would work,” Maxwell said.
Asked if she feels like a victim of Epstein herself, Maxwell said, “I don’t particularly like the word victim. It’s one that should be used very sparingly because, you know, today everybody is a victim of something.”
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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Photo altered to include judge who approved Mar-a-Lago warrant
CLAIM: A photo shows Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein who was convicted of sex trafficking, with U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, the judge who approved the FBI search warrant for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
THE FACTS: This image has been manipulated by combining two separate, unrelated photos. Social media users are sharing the manipulated image that puts Reinhart and Maxwell together, making it appear she is rubbing his foot as he holds a bottle of bourbon and package of Oreos. “Ghislaine Maxwell and Judge Bruce Reinhart… looking awful cozy!” read one tweet of the image shared by hundreds. But reverse image searches show that the original photo of Maxwell was with Epstein, not Reinhart. That photo was released in 2021 as evidence in her trial and published by various news outlets. Maxwell was sentenced in June to 20 years in prison for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls. The AP identified the photo of Reinhart on a Facebook profile under his name. The caption indicates he was watching a football game. The manufactured image is circulating amid attention on Reinhart for approving the FBI search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Reinhart is a former federal prosecutor and has served as a magistrate in West Palm Beach, Florida, since March 2018. Reinhart did at one point represent associates of Epstein. For example, court records reviewed by the AP show he was an attorney for Sarah Kellen, Epstein’s personal assistant. The search at Mar-a-Lago was part of an investigation into whether Trump took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence, according to people familiar with the matter, the AP reported.
— Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.
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Monkeypox wasn’t found in Georgia drinking water
CLAIM: A news report shows that monkeypox has been detected in drinking water.
THE FACTS: The clip comes from an Atlanta-area news broadcast explaining how wastewater — not drinking water — can be tested for evidence of monkeypox’s spread. But the July 26 broadcast is being mischaracterized online to push the false claim that monkeypox has been found in residents’ tap water. The video shows a reporter explaining that the public works department in Fulton County, which encompasses Atlanta, is launching new efforts to try to detect monkeypox in the community. While the news report is playing in the video, a viewer filming their TV screen can be heard in the background saying “there’s monkeypox in the water.” TikTok and Twitter users are sharing the clip out of context to suggest it means that drinking water is contaminated or being intentionally tampered with. But the county’s tests have nothing to do with drinking water, nor did they reveal that the virus had been found in that supply. “The testing that we’re doing in wastewater for monkeypox DNA is completely separate from drinking water,” said Marlene Wolfe, an environmental microbiologist and epidemiologist at Atlanta’s Emory University, who is involved in the testing initiative. “We have not tested drinking water, we are not planning to test drinking water, we don’t have any expectations or concerns about monkeypox spreading through drinking water.” Experts say monkeypox is primarily spread through skin-to-skin contact such as sexual activity, or contact with items that previously touched an infected person’s rash or body fluids. Dr. Mark Slifka, a microbiology and immunology expert and professor at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, confirmed that “there is really no way” that monkeypox can be transmitted through drinking water. “Historically, there has been no evidence of monkeypox spread through drinking water and currently during this global outbreak, there is absolutely no evidence for monkeypox being spread through drinking water,” Slifka wrote in an email. Wolfe said that people infected with monkeypox excrete virus DNA through skin lesions, saliva, feces and urine, which, much like COVID-19, can enter wastewater through sewage that is produced after showering, flushing toilets and more. That water can be tested using PCR technology to determine whether certain viruses are being spread. This method has also been widely used for earlier detection of new COVID-19 waves. Data released after the news report found that wastewater samples from two areas in Fulton County have tested positive for monkeypox. Meanwhile, drinking water comes from separate reservoirs that go through different quality and treatment processes to make it drinkable. “That’s a totally different department. We only handle wastewater,” said Patrick Person, a Fulton County water quality manager. He added that wastewater is also eventually sanitized before being returned to the environment.
— Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in New York contributed this report.
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Tweet misrepresents Kenyan president’s speech
CLAIM: Video shows outgoing Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta publicly admitting that his deputy president, William Ruto, will win the presidential elections on Aug. 9.
THE FACTS: A tweet in English gave an incorrect description of the video, where Kenyatta speaks his mother tongue, Kikuyu. Kenyans headed to the polls on Tuesday to select a successor to Kenyatta, who has spent a decade in power. One candidate in the race is Raila Odinga, an opposition leader, who is backed by Kenyatta, his former rival. The other candidate is Ruto, Kenyatta’s deputy who fell out with the president. While Kenyatta was commissioning a dam project last week in Gatundu, a town in Kiambu County, he addressed the crowd from a car’s sunroof on Aug. 1. A Twitter user shared a video of Kenyatta’s speech and provided a false description in English: “President Uhuru Kenyatta publicly admits that DP@WilliamsRuto will WIN the August 9, Elections,” the tweet states. The AP translated the video, confirming that Kenyatta does not mention that Ruto will win. Instead, Kenyatta cautioned people against voting for Ruto. Kenyatta encouraged residents to vote for leaders allied with Odinga, a tweet from Kenya’s State House notes. “You are told to refuse us because they claim they are hustlers and they will bring you this and that,” Kenyatta said in the video. “Ask yourself what you are given. And when someone enters that house they look at you with a mean eye,” he continued, referring to the State House, the official residence of Kenya’s president. Ruto often refers to himself as a “hustler” who rose from humble beginnings, compared to Kenyatta and Odinga, who have elite backgrounds, the AP has reported. Multiple media outlets in Kenya also reported on the speech and made no mention of Kenyatta telling residents Ruto will win.
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WHO chief is vaccinated against COVID-19, contrary to false claim
CLAIM: Video shows World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying he isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19.
THE FACTS: The clip is from a documentary and shows part of an interview, filmed weeks after Ghebreyesus was vaccinated, in which he says at one point that he waited for better global vaccine equity before receiving his own shot. But the clip is circulating on social media without context to falsely claim that it shows the WHO leader expressing that he had not been vaccinated against COVID-19. “Tedros not jabbed?” reads one tweet, which garnered more than 8,000 likes. The 35-second clip shows a portion of a 2021 interview of Tedros by Jon Cohen, a writer for the publication Science. The interview was included in a documentary, “ How to Survive a Pandemic,” which runs more than 100 minutes. The clip shows Cohen asking Ghebreyesus when he was vaccinated, and then cuts to the WHO director-general responding: “You know, still I feel like I know where I belong: in a poor country called Ethiopia, in a poor continent called Africa, and wanted to wait until Africa and other countries, in other regions, low-income countries, start vaccination. So I was protesting, in other words, because we’re failing.” But the documentary never claimed Ghebreyesus was not vaccinated, nor did Ghebreyesus’ response indicate as much. In the full June 12, 2021, interview — which was edited for the documentary — Ghebreyesus in fact did reply that he was vaccinated on May 12, according to the Science article by Cohen that followed. Ghebreyesus also publicly posted a photo on Twitter showing him receiving his vaccine that day, which he followed with a post about vaccine equity. The date was not included in the portion of the response shown in the documentary, Cohen confirmed to the AP. Cohen responded to the erroneous claim about Ghebreyesus’ vaccination status on Twitter, calling it a “lie,” and pointing to his written interview. The filmmaker, David France, said in an interview with the AP that the important part of Ghebreyesus’ answer was his explanation that he had waited for better vaccine equity before getting his own shot. But, he said, Ghebreyesus’ explanation that he had waited was clearly in the past tense. “In the context of the film, it was the wait — and the reason for the wait — that was the core part of his answer, and that’s what we included,” France said.
— Angelo Fichera
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Earth spinning faster is no cause for concern, scientists say
CLAIM: The Earth is spinning faster and days are getting shorter, a change that is noticeable and cause for immediate concern.
THE FACTS: While the Earth on June 29 did indeed record its shortest-ever day since the adoption of the atomic clock standard in 1970 — at 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours — scientists say this is a normal fluctuation. Still, news of the faster rotation led to misleading posts on social media about the significance of the measurement, leading some to express concern about its implications. “They broke news of earth spinning faster which seems like it should be bigger news,” claimed one tweet that was shared nearly 35,000 times. “We so desensitized to catastrophe at this point it’s like well what’s next.” Some Twitter users responded to these tweets with jokes, as well as skepticism about the magnitude of the measurement. Others, however, voiced worries about how it would affect them. But scientists told the AP that the Earth’s rotational speed fluctuates constantly and that the record-setting measurement is nothing to panic over. “It’s a completely normal thing,” said Stephen Merkowitz, a scientist and project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “There’s nothing magical or special about this. It’s not such an extreme data point that all the scientists are going to wake up and go, what’s going on?” Andrew Ingersoll, an emeritus professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, agreed with this assessment. “The Earth’s rotation varies by milliseconds for many reasons,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “None of them are cause for concern.” The slight increase in rotational speed also does not mean that days are going by noticeably faster. Merkowitz explained that standardized time was once determined by how long it takes the Earth to rotate once on its axis — widely understood to be 24 hours. But because that speed fluctuates slightly, that number can vary by milliseconds. Scientists in the 1960s began working with atomic clocks to measure time more accurately. The official length of a day, scientifically speaking, now compares the speed of one full rotation of the Earth to time taken by atomic clocks, Merkowitz said. If those measurements get too out of sync, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, an organization that maintains global time, may fix the discrepancy by adding a leap second. And despite recent decreases in the length of a day over the last few years, days have actually been getting longer over the course of several centuries, according to Judah Levine, a physicist in the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He added that the current trend was not predicted, but agreed it’s nothing to worry about. Many variables impact the Earth’s rotation, such as influences from other planets or the moon, as well as how Earth’s mass redistributes itself. For example, ice sheets melting or weather events that create a denser atmosphere, according to Merkowitz. But the kind of event that would move enough mass to affect the Earth’s rotation in a way that is perceptible to humans would be something dire like the planet being hit by a giant meteor, Merkowitz said.
— Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.
