Fox News is facing flak for airing a fake image of the federal judge who signed off on the warrant allowing FBI agents to search former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
In the altered image, the photo of the judge was placed onto an old photo of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein getting a foot massage by convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
The image was photoshopped onto the image holding Oreos and a bottle of whiskey. It was credited to the Twitter account @whatimemetosay, which describes itself as a “digital art creator”.
The image was aired on Thursday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, where the stand-in host, Brian Kilmeade, teased the fake image in the live 9 pm show.
“So, a picture of Bruce Reinhart, this is the judge in charge of the, of the ah… of the ah, as you know of the warrant. And we’ll see if he’s going to release it next. He likes Oreos and whiskey,” Kilmeade said while speaking to another Fox News host Sean Hannity, adding, “Sean, can you relate to that?”
To which Hannity replied, “I think that’s actually a picture of Jeffrey Epstein with somebody putting his head on there … I’m guessing, I don’t know.”
“Who knows?” Kilmeade then concluded.
The original photo taken in September 2017 was released by federal prosecutors during Maxwell’s child sex-trafficking trial late last year.
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People were quick to point out that it was a fake image and slammed the right-wing network on social media for airing the altered photo.
“This is Fox, and this is Kilmeade. (The judge) should sue, because s*** like this needs to cost them,” Democratic activist Ron Filipkowski said, reports Independent.
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Since then, Kilmeade apologised tweeting, “Last night while subbing for Tucker Carlson, we showed you an image of Judge Bruce Reinhart w/ Ghislaine Maxwell that was sourced on screen to a meme pulled from Twitter & wasn’t real. This depiction never took place & we wanted to make clear that we were showing a meme in jest.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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