Fox News came under fire after it bizarrely cropped President Donald Trump out of a photo of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and indicted alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell but left first lady Melania Trump in the image.
The network showed photos of Epstein and Maxwell while covering the latter's recent arrest, including a photo taken in 2000 of the pair with Trump and Melania. The president was inexplicably cropped out of the photo.
According to Getty Images, the photo was taken at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Maxwell, accused of recruiting and grooming teenage victims for Epstein to abuse, was indicted last week, nearly a year after Epstein committed suicide at a New York jail while facing child sex trafficking charges. She has denied the allegations.
In a statement to Salon, a Fox News spokesperson called the omission an "error."
"On Sunday, July 5, a report on Ghislaine Maxwell during Fox News Channel's America's News HQ mistakenly eliminated President Donald Trump from a photo alongside then Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell," the said in the statement. "We regret the error."
Epstein and Maxwell frequently socialized with prominent figures in New York and elsewhere, including Trump.
"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy," Trump told New York Magazine in 2002. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
Epstein has been linked to a number of other wealthy and prominent people, including former President Bill Clinton.
Investigators reportedly identified 36 underage victims while investigating Epstein in Florida in 2005, but the alleged billionaire scored a sweetheart plea deal from the Department of Justice which allowed him to plead guilty to two lesser prostitution charges and serve just 13 months in county jail while being able to continue to work out of his office.
Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges brought by federal prosecutors in New York last year.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was arrested in New Hampshire last week after she was indicted on six charges related to Epstein's alleged sex trafficking operation.
Eric Trump responded to the news of Maxwell's arrest by tweeting a photo of her attending Chelsea Clinton's wedding in 2010.
"Birds of a feather," he wrote.
Trump later removed the tweet after users inundated him with numerous photos showing his father and Maxwell at a wide variety of events.
Eric even flew to Mar-a-Lago with his father and Maxwell in 1997, according to a New Yorker profile published at the time.
Fox News' selective edit occurred as the network came under fire from Trump for reporting on polls which show him losing to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and for allowing Democratic pundits on their shows.
Former national security adviser John Bolton told CBS News on Sunday that Trump is frequently plugged into cable news rather than working in the Oval Office.
"I think if you could clock the amount of time he spent actually in the Oval Office versus the amount of time he spends in the little dining room off the Oval Office with the cable news networks of one form or another on," he said, "it would be a very interesting statistic."
You can watch the clip below via YouTube:
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