Claim:
The release of U.S. government files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exposed former President Barack Obama as a participant in a “ritualistic orgy empire” on Epstein’s Little St. James island.
Rating:
A rumor that circulated online in November 2025 claimed an “Epstein bombshell” exposed former U.S. President Barack Obama as a participant in a “ritualistic orgy empire” on Little St. James, an island in the U.S. Virgin Islands the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein owned. Part of the claim also suggested the Newsmax TV network reported the alleged news.
This rumor spread on social media soon after President Donald Trump’s Nov. 19 signing of a bill to release Epstein’s case files. The Associated Press reported Trump could have chosen to release many of the files on his own many months before.
In short, the rumor was completely fabricated and Newsmax never published such a story.
The claim originated from the Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived) accounts of Jonathan Gregory (@newsmax.baby), who publishes satirical articles with text resembling that of stories generated using artificial-intelligence tools.
Snopes contacted Gregory via Messenger to inquire about his content and will update this article if we receive further information.
More about the rumor
On Nov. 20, the day after Trump signed the bill to release Epstein’s case files, Gregory posted (archived) the fabricated story on Facebook, attributing the writing to himself. The post began:
Epstein Bombshell: Eyewitnesses Expose Obama’s Ritualistic Orgy Empire on Pedophile Island – Trump’s DOJ Poised to Crush the Elite Cover-Up!
By Jonathan Gregory
Washington D.C. – November 20, 2025
Freshly unsealed Epstein files have detonated a political earthquake, unveiling multiple eyewitness testimonies that place former President Barack Obama at the epicenter of depraved sexual escapades on Little St. James, Epstein’s infamous island lair. Survivors and insiders recount Obama’s repeated visits involving bisexual orgies with both men and women, orchestrated as twisted “rites of passage” for ambitious Democrats, humiliating initiations laced with dominance and degradation to bind rising stars in Congress and beyond to the shadowy power structure. These accounts paint Obama not as a bystander but as the commanding figurehead, enforcing ritualistic acts of submission that ensured loyalty in the elite cabal, far eclipsing the distractions peddled by complicit media outlets desperate to shield their darling from accountability.
The rest of the story mentioned the “deep state” and ended, “With Trump commanding the ship, the days of ritualistic cover ups are numbered, justice for the victims starts now, and the swamp’s days of unchecked indulgence are over.” The end of the post misleadingly included a tag for Newsmax, “@newsmax,” even though the network never published the article.
Gregory also shared the matter as an Instagram video (archived) with voice narration that resembled AI-generated speech. Other users shared Gregory’s post, some of them copying and pasting its text, on Facebook (archived) and X (archived).
The Obama story’s opening and closing sentences, in particular, included writing that had hallmarks of AI-generated content, such as the forward-thinking and dramatized wording in the final sentence saying “the days of ritualistic cover ups are numbered” and talking about “the swamp’s days of unchecked indulgence are over.” (While AI detection websites are not always reliable, Copyleaks and ZeroGPT both detected at least some AI-generated text.)
While the made-up Obama story did not explicitly mention the word “satire,” past stories Gregory published featured the words “satire” or “satirical” in the second half of their text, signaling the stories’ untrue nature in a spot some readers might miss. Gregory’s Instagram account also identifies him as a comedian. Snopes previously fact-checked other fabricated stories originating from Gregory’s Facebook account.
For further reading involving sensational rumors about Obama, we previously investigated the claim that Delta Force operators raided Obama’s “stronghold” in Thailand.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources calling their output humorous or satirical.
