Amid President Donald Trump's efforts to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID), social media users are claiming the agency paid more than $265,000 to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking crimes. This is false; the screenshot cited in posts references a different man with the same name and does not show government expenditures, but money from Kaiser Permanente, a nonprofit healthcare provider.

"Do you wonder why Democrats are freaking out about spending cuts? Jeffrey Epstein was getting payments from USAID! and who else?!" says a February 5, 2025 post on X.

Similar posts spread widely across X and other platforms including Instagram as Trump and Elon Musk, tasked by the president with overhauling the federal government, announced the administration's decision to dismantle USAID and put almost all of its more than 10,000 employees on leave.

The agency has for decades funded health and emergency programs as well as democracy promotion initiatives in about 120 countries, including the world's poorest regions. Trump, Musk and his allies have alleged the agency is rife with "fraud" but provided little evidence to support their allegations.

Online claims that USAID's massive spending included payments to the convicted sex offender Epstein are also false.

Different Epstein

A search of USAspending.gov, an official open data source compiling federal spending information, shows no USAID...

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