Following President Donald Trump's freeze of foreign aid, it has been widely shared on social media that Jeffrey Epstein was being paid by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
At the end of January, Trump announced the freeze on new funding for almost all U.S. foreign assistance programs, as tech billionaire Elon Musk and other close allies labeled many USAID programs wasteful.
The Claim
On the social media platform X, the account @HustleBitch_ shared a post, writing: "Jeffrey Epstein was being paid by USAID as a Director."
@HustleBitch_ is a YouTuber who says in his X bio: "I seek the truth and share it but..." and has a disclaimer that says his posts are for "entertainment purposes only." He has more than 89,500 followers on X, and has over 433,000 subscribers on YouTube.
The post includes a screenshot of what appears to be a bank transaction, to a "Jeffrey E. Epstein," who is indicated as a director of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. The screenshot appears to show that $265,915 was sent to Epstein.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc reportedly provides its services under the name Kaiser Permanente, according to company-histories.com, and provides health care, including preventive medicine, to its members and other medical and pharmacy services through its network of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries.
The post has since accumulated more than 187,000 views on the platform since it was posted on Wednesday.
There have been others like it, such as a post by the account @IndianaGPA, who is a MAGA-supporter, according to their X account. They have more than 15,200 followers on the platform, and their post on Epstein has accumulated more than 1,800 views since it was posted on Wednesday.
The Facts
However, the Epstein, who joined the board of directors of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc in 2013, according to a report by PR Newswire, appears to be a different Epstein to the one who was arrested on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors in 2019.
The child sex offender was also found dead in his New York jail cell in 2019, and these payments were made around four years after he died.
In addition, the Epstein who worked for Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, was more commonly known as "Jeff" Epstein, and was a former CFO of Oracle, one of the world's largest and most profitable technology companies, according to PR Newswire.
In 2024, he was also appointed as chair of the Twilio Board of Directors.
He has also been an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners since 2011, according to what appears to be his LinkedIn account, and he is also a lecturer for the Department of Management Science & Engineering and Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
The Ruling
False.
The posts circulating online are confusing Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex offender, with Jeff Epstein, who sits on the board of directors at Kaiser Permanente.
This ruling has also been made given that Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell in 2019, and the payment shown in the screenshots of the X posts are noted as being in 2023.
FACT CHECK BY Jasmine Laws
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English (US) ·