Judge in E. Jean Carroll-Donald Trump trial “involved in sex trafficking.”

An Instagram post baselessly accused the judge who handled two defamation lawsuits involving former president Donald Trump of sex trafficking, sharing an article that referred to the judge’s role in a Jeffrey Epstein-related lawsuit.

A Jan. 28 Instagram post shared a screenshot of a Truth Social post from Gateway Pundit that  linked to an article on the conservative website with the headline, “Who is Bill Clinton-Appointed Judge Lewis Kaplan, the Judge in the E. Jean Carroll Case?”

Sticker text atop the Instagram post read “Wait till you find out he was involved in sex trafficking.”

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) 

The Gateway Pundit article does not, however, say that Kaplan is involved in sex trafficking. If Kaplan, a high-profile federal judge, were accused of such a crime, there would be news coverage, but we could find none in a search of Google and a Nexis database.

We found no evidence that Kaplan has been accused of or charged with sex trafficking. 

(Instagram screenshot)

A Manhattan jury on Jan. 26 awarded Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and journalist, $83.3 million in her defamation lawsuit against Trump, whom she accused of raping her in a New York department store in 1996.

That verdict is in addition to the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll in May after finding Trump liable for sexually abusing her.

Kaplan presided over both trials, and the Gateway Pundit article criticizes his rulings in the cases.

The article also noted that Kaplan has been involved in other high-profile trials, and that he dismissed a lawsuit against Britain’s Prince Andrew by one of Epstein’s accusers. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein of sex trafficking her, in 2021 filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew, whom she accused of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.

Kaplan dismissed that case in March 2022, only after lawyers for Giuffre and Prince Andrew reached a settlement that included a large donation from the prince to Giuffre’s charity. Two months earlier, Kaplan had rejected Prince Andrew’s motion to dismiss the case.

We rate the Instagram post’s claim that Kaplan was involved in sex trafficking Pants on Fire!