For several years, posts on social media have claimed that various celebrities have connections to the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019. One name frequently included in such posts is film director Rob Reiner. In the wake of Reiner’s killing in December 2025, users on social media claimed Reiner was close with Epstein, even visiting Epstein’s private island.
Snopes readers wrote asking us to investigate the rumor that Reiner had connections with Epstein. We found there was no publicly available evidence supporting a connection.
Many of the posts connecting Reiner and Epstein simply named Reiner as one of a large number of high-profile figures who supposedly had ties to the sex criminal. Snopes found examples of that list online dating back to 2020, which was shared without evidence and was sometimes connected to the larger QAnon conspiracy theory. The public’s call for more scrutiny into investigations around Epstein in 2025 resulted in several releases of documents related to the cases, sometimes referred to as the “Epstein files.”
The U.S. Justice Department has said the files do not contain a rumored — and much-sought-after — list of high-profile people involved in the sex trafficking ring Epstein was charged with running. Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald journalist whose 2017 and 2018 articles on Epstein helped reopen the investigation that ultimately led to his 2019 arrest, called the existence of such a list a “red herring” in a 2025 interview with The Atlantic.
At times, social media posts have incorrectly claimed that Epstein’s phone book or the flight logs for his private plane make up a list of his co-conspirators. But the phone book, sometimes nicknamed the “black book,” was “just a phone directory,” according to Brown.
“Every time Epstein or Maxwell met somebody important, they would get their contact information, and they would put it in this file,” she told The Atlantic. “There were people like Donald Trump on that list and celebrities. But there were also his gardeners who were on that list, his hairdresser, his barbers, his electrician. I mean, it was a comprehensive list.”Â
It’s important to note, as New York magazine’s comprehensive list of prominent people linked to Epstein does, that just because someone is listed in Epstein’s phone book or had other documented ties to the disgraced financier does not mean that person was aware of or involved in any of Epstein’s crimes. (Reiner was not on New York magazine’s list.)
Regardless, Snopes went through Epstein’s phone book to see if there was an entry for Reiner. There was not. Given that Reiner did not even have an entry in Epstein’s directory, it’s unlikely — albeit not impossible — that the two ever interacted in a meaningful way, based on Brown’s knowledge of how he compiled the phone book.
Snopes also searched through publicly available portions of flight logs for Epstein’s private plane to see if Reiner was ever named as a passenger. He was not.
We also searched stock photo sites like Getty Images for pictures of Reiner and Epstein together. None existed.
In sum, we found no public evidence suggesting Reiner had any ties to Epstein.
Sources
“Epstein Files: Names in Disgraced Financier’s Contact Book.” The Independent, 18 Nov. 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/epstein-client-files-list-names-trump-emails-b2867652.html.
Epstein Files: Who Else Was Mentioned? 19 Nov. 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn09n94qg92o.
LaFrance, Adrienne. The Razor-Thin Line Between Conspiracy Theory and Actual Conspiracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/07/the-line-between-conspiracy-theory-and-actual-conspiracy/683569/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2025, Podcasts.
Nally, Leland. “I Called Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book.” Mother Jones, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyone-in-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2025.
Staff, Al Jazeera. “Names Linked to Jeffrey Epstein Set to Be Made Public: All You Need to Know.” Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/2/names-linked-to-jeffrey-epstein-set-to-be-made-public-all-you-need-to-know. Accessed 16 Dec. 2025.
Stieb, Chas Danner, Benjamin Hart, Matt. “The Updated Epstein List: Who Is Named in All of the Files?” Intelligencer, 12 Dec. 2025, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/who-is-on-jeffrey-epstein-list-names-clients-associates-files-emails.html.
