Claim this document shows Jimmy Kimmel in Epstein court case is Pants on Fire!

The first 40 of more than 200 court documents from a 2015 lawsuit filed by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking victims were released Jan. 3, unsealing the previously redacted names of dozens of people mentioned in the case.

Some social media users used the moment to falsely claim late night TV host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel was named in the documents. Kimmel made news a day before the documents became public, when New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers said during a Jan. 2 appearance on the "The Pat McAfee Show" that Kimmel was among the people hoping the documents didn’t come out. Kimmel responded on X by threatening to sue Rodgers and stating that he had never "met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list.’"

A Jan. 3 X post said otherwise: "All of you sheeple that stuck up for Jimmy Pedo Kimmel. Conspiracy theorists are batting 1700%. Aaron Rodgers was correct — Jimmy Kimmel was on the list and more."

The post shared what looked like a screenshot of an X post made by an account called Citizen Free Press. "Not funny, Jimmy Kimmel" the post read along with an image of what looks like a court transcript in which someone claims to have had sex with Kimmel at Epstein’s Florida mansion.

The X post had been retweeted more than 380 times and had 60,000 views by Jan. 4. But the court document shared in the post is fake, according to the Citizen Free Press, a conservative news content aggregation site.

(X screenshot)

Another X account, which didn’t mention the Citizen Free Press, shared the fake court transcript Jan. 3, garnering 3,000 retweets and 1 million views.

Documents released Jan. 3 stem from Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend, who in 2022 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on sex trafficking and other charges. 

The documents don’t mention Kimmel. Citizen Free Press’ X account does not include a post sharing a document about Kimmel. Moreover, Citizen Free Press’ account features a red and white avatar, while the one in the fake screengrab is black and white and seems to show an image from the 1941 movie Citizen Kane.

The Citizen Free Press said in a Jan. 3 X post that Kimmel was not named in the first document release.

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"The image going around is not included in today's documents," it said in the post. The Citizen Free Press followed up with a reply sharing another post that called the document fake, and said, "As usual, it takes all of 5 minutes to track down the source and search the document but people don't care. We do." 

The Citizen Free Press also confirmed an assertion by Ron Filipkowski, editor of the liberal website, The MeidasTouch Network, that the Kimmel document was fake.

"Your least favorite Twitter account is 100% correct," the Citizen Free Press wrote in a Jan. 3 X post.

More documents were expected to be released. 

We rate the claim that Kimmel was named in an Epstein court document Pants on Fire!