During its Sunday coverage of the arrest of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Fox News cropped President Trump out of a photograph of him posing with Maxwell, the late registered sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and first lady Melania Trump.
The network says the crop was a mistake, and that it “regrets the error.”
“On Sunday, July 5, a report on Ghislaine Maxwell during FOX News Channel’s America’s News HQ mistakenly eliminated President Donald Trump from a photo alongside then Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell. We regret the error.”
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The cropped photo was shown during America’s News Headquarters while anchor Leland Vittert was reporting on Maxwell’s arrest and the charges being brought against her in connection with Epstein’s underage sex crimes. Vittert was interviewing Jordan Merson, counsel for nine Epstein accusers, when FNC aired an image of Trump’s girlfriend-turned wife/first lady, along with Epstein and Maxwell.
The original one, shown below, includes the then-businessman-turned-president. It was taken at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000.
Epstein committed suicide last August in a New York jail while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls. At the time, he was already a registered sex offender.
Maxwell, on the other hand, was arrested in New Hampshire Thursday morning, and brought to New York early this morning. She is reportedly being housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Maxwell was charged in a six-count indictment alleging that she enticed underage girls to engage in illegal sex acts with Epstein in the mid-’90s—and that she ended up lying about it.