Fact Check: Is the post linking Obama to an Indonesian girl’s death real?

WASHINGTON, DC: Amid the controversies and conspiracy theories surrounding the release of a massive tranche of files linked to the convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein, a photo has surfaced on social media platforms claiming that a girl photographed with former President Barack Obama was found dead. Let us analyse the photo and fact-check it.

Claim: Image links Barack Obama to a murdered girl

The photos shared on X on February 2 came with a simplified Chinese caption stating, “This image was not created by artificial intelligence. Obama, George Clooney, and a 9-year-old girl. The girl is dead!" 

The first image shows Obama, actor George Clooney, and a child sitting in a boat. The other is a collage of photos of Obama hugging a child alongside an image of a dead girl who has had her limbs bound and her mouth taped shut.

The second image was shared in a different X post with a  simplified Chinese caption that reads, “No one in the Epstein case has faced legal punishment!"

Fact Check: Images are misrepresented in the false posts

However, the viral image is not linked to the Epstein files, and they have been misrepresented in the false posts, as it has been publicly available for years before the release of the files.

A reverse image search reveals that the image of Obama and Clooney on a boat was captured in June 2019, when the former US president and his family visited the actor's mansion in northern Italy's Lake Como region.

A keyword search on Google found that the photo of Obama hugging a child was taken on December 4, 2015, by the White House's official photographer, Pete Souza, who posted it on his personal blog.

"The President snuggles with his niece Savita Ng after his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her family dropped by the Oval Office," reads the photo's caption.

A reverse image search for the girl whose mouth was taped shut was found to be Putri Nur Fauziah, a nine-year-old Indonesian girl whose body was found in October 2015, two months before the Oval Office photo was taken.

Release of millions of files linked to Jeffrey Epstein

The images surfaced following the Department of Justice's release on January 30 of millions of additional pages of records connected to Epstein. 

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the release also included more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

The decision to release the files came after weeks of criticism that the department was not following a federal law passed in November, which required all Epstein-related files to be made public by December 19.

Numerous individuals listed in the records are mentioned in flight logs, interviews, third-party communications, or ancillary investigative documents without being accused of any criminal activity.

While several files in the cache released in January 2026 mention Obama, many are news articles about the former president.