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Facebook posts
stated on July 17, 2020 in Facebook posts:

Say Joe Biden is a

pedophile.

FA C E B O O K FA C T - C H E C K S

FA C E B O O K P O S T S

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice

President Joe Biden during a campaign rally at Eakins
Oval in Philadelphia, Saturday, May 18, 2019. (AP

By Samantha Putterman
August 12, 2020

Fact-checking the
pedophilia attacks against
Joe Biden

I F YO U R T I M E I S S H O R T

There is no credible evidence that

supports this claim. In Joe Biden’s
more than 40 years of public life, we
could find no news reports, formal
accusations, complaints, arrests or
investigations that implicate him in
any sort of sex crimes involving kids.

See the sources for this fact-check

It’s no secret that political candidates

running for o!ce face a barrage of
personal attacks on the campaign trail
— the 2020 presidential election is no
di"erent. 

One of the most egregious examples we

have come across is illustrated by a flood
of social media posts that claim Joe
Biden, the former vice president and
presumptive Democratic nominee for
president, is a "pedophile."

Allegations of child sex molestation are

a prominent part of the QAnon
conspiracy theory that suggests a "deep
state" is working against President
Trump’s success.

The posts were flagged as part of

Facebook’s e"orts to combat false news
and misinformation on its News Feed.
(Read more about our partnership with
Facebook.) 

We found no credible evidence that

supports this claim. Pedophilia is
characterized by an obsession of seeing
children as sex objects, according to
Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary: "A
person who acts upon this obsession, by
molesting a child, taking explicit
photographs, and performing other acts
specified by law, is guilty of a crime."

In Biden’s more than 40 years of public

life — including two prior runs for the
Democratic presidential nomination and
eight years as vice president — there
have been no formal accusations,
complaints, arrests or investigations
that implicate him in any sort of sex
crimes involving kids.

Biden has been accused by some adult

women of unwanted touching in public
— and former Senate sta"er Tara Reade
accused him of sexual assault — but
there have never been any credible
accusations of Biden engaging in
inappropriate conduct with children. 

Our searches of Google and the Nexis

database, dating back to Biden’s Senate
days, turned up no arrests, news
reports, or authoritative testimonies of
inappropriate acts by Biden involving
children.

When we reached out to discuss the

accusations, Biden’s campaign pointed
us to a May 2020 statement that was
issued in response to an Instagram post
by Donald Trump Jr. in which the
president’s son shared an image of
Biden saying, "See you later, alligator"
alongside a photo of an alligator saying,
"In a while, pedophile," to his 3 million
followers.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden,

told the New York Times, "No repulsive,
manipulative tactic will change the
subject from how almost 90,000
Americans have paid for Donald
Trump’s coronavirus negligence with
their lives and how the booming
economy he inherited from the Obama-
Biden Administration is now su"ering
from depression-level job losses." The
COVID-19 death count in the U.S., as of
this writing, is over 164,000.

Trump Jr. later claimed he was "just

joking" in a Twitter post, yet also
repeated the insinuation by saying Biden
should stop his "unwanted touching"
and posted a collage of photographs of
Biden with children at White House
events.

Biden briefly addressed Trump Jr.’s

actions shortly after, saying that what
the president’s son was "trying to do is
get something going on the internet" by
repeating the claim often enough that
people believe it.  

"It’s sick," Biden said during a Yahoo

News virtual town hall. "But he is his
father’s son."

FE AT U RE D FACT-C HEC K

Viral image
stated on February 26, 2023 in an
Instagram post

Former President Donald

Trump “was the 1st
president in U.S. history to
acknowledge that children
are being sold for sex in the
U.S.” while President Joe
Biden “rescinded Trump’s
executive order that helped
combat child sex
trafficking.”

By Ciara O'Rourke • February 27, 2023

President Donald Trump has also been

accused of sexual misconduct by several
women. Dated photos of Trump with
young girls, some of them doctored,
have also spread on social media along
with unproven allegations that he, too,
is a pedophile.

Examining the images

On social media, the accusation is often

accompanied by images, memes, GIFs
and videos of Biden appearing to touch
children inappropriately. The photos
that are real often lack context. Others
are not of him or have been deceptively
edited to suggest something improper.

We found that these images are

overwhelmingly captured at public
events when he is posing for pictures or
greeting people and many depict Biden
showing a"ection toward his family.

For example, one photo, of Biden

leaning down by a boy with his hand
cupped on the child’s face, shows him
comforting his grandson at the funeral
of Beau Biden, Biden’s son who died of
brain cancer. Another image from the
funeral routinely used in posts shows
Biden kissing the top of his
granddaughter’s head as she stands
holding her mother’s hand. Another
shows Biden leaning in to kiss his
grandson during his 2013 swearing-in
ceremony as vice president.

RELATED: No, this photo doesn't show

Joe Biden engaging in disturbing
behavior with a boy

Some of the photos used in the posts

were taken at various White House
events over the years, and in multiple
cases the parents have spoken out
against claims that Biden behaved
inappropriately around their children.

One often-used photo shows Biden

touching a young girl’s arm as he leans
in to whisper something as she looks
slightly uncomfortable.

The image shows Maggie Coons, the

daughter of Sen. Chris Coons of
Delaware, during her father’s swearing-
in ceremony in January 2015. 

After the clip went viral, Sen. Coons, a

Democrat, told Fox News host Chris
Wallace that Biden was simply o"ering
her reassurance and that his daughter
didn’t think he was creepy. Coons said
that Biden, who held Coons’ Senate seat
before resigning to serve as vice
president, has known his children their
whole lives.

"I could hear him," Coons said in the

interview. "He was leaning forward and
whispering some encouragement to her
about how, when he was sworn in, his
own daughter Ashley was 13 and she felt
awkward and uncomfortable."

Carly Melin, former member of the

Minnesota House of Representatives,
spoke out on Twitter when a 2014 photo
she took with Biden and former U.S. Rep.
Rick Nolan, D-Minn., became the
subject of a Twitter thread by
conservative columnist Richard
Armande Mills. In the image, Melin and
Biden are both holding Melin’s son.
Mills, a conservative columnist for
Turning Point USA, wrote in the tweet
that Biden is "an open sexual predator."

"Sir, I don’t know you," Melin

responded. "You have tweeted out
multiple photos of my infant son in a
disturbing, misconstrued attempt to
advance your political viewpoint. Delete
all tweets that include my son. I’ve
reported your behavior to Twitter.
Thank you."

Our ruling

Social media users claim that Biden is a

pedophile. There is zero evidence — no
accusations, testimonies, arrests or
investigations — that gives this claim
any credibility.

Photos that supposedly support the

claim are taken out of context or have
been directly contradicted by the
families involved.

We rate this Pants on Fire.

Learn more

Our Sources

Facebook post, July 17, 2020

Facebook post,  July 23, 2020

PolitiFact, A photograph shows Joe Biden

engaging in disturbing behavior with a
boy., Feb. 17, 2019

PolitiFact, No, this isn’t a photo of Biden

making out with a 15-year-old girl, May
28, 2020

Nexis search, Aug. 4, 2020

Google search, Aug. 4, 2020

AP Images, INAUGURAL SWEARING IN

BIDEN, Jan. 20, 2013

AP Images, NEW CONGRESS SENATE,

Jan. 6, 2015

CNN, Senator's daughter doesn't think

Biden's 'creepy', Jan. 12, 2015

Twitter, Carly Melin post, Oct. 25, 2014

Twitter, Carly Melin post, Dec. 23, 2017 

New York Times, Donald Trump Jr.

Smears Biden With Baseless Instagram
Post, May 16, 2020

Forbes,  Biden Responds To Obamagate,

Trump Jr. Pedophilia Attacks: ‘I Don’t
Want To Get Down In The Mud With
These Guys’, May 20, 2020

Business Insider, Donald Trump Jr shares

Instagram meme that accused Joe Biden
of being a 'pedophile', May 17, 2020

Email interview, Andrew Bates,

spokesperson for Joe Biden’s presidential
campaign, Aug. 3, 2020

READ ABOUT OUR PROCESS

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stated on March 16, 2023 an
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stated on March 9, 2023 in TV ad:

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and “unrecused himself so
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stated on March 4, 2023 in a post on
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Violent crime in Manhattan

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stated on March 13, 2023 in a tweet:

“No one got (a) dime” from

✕
the $70 million raised for the
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