Photo altered to show Donald Trump with Melania and Stormy Daniels

CLAIM: A photo shows former President Donald Trump alongside both his pregnant wife, former first lady Melania Trump, and porn star Stormy Daniels.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The three were not pictured together. An image of the Trumps at a 2005 fashion industry event was altered to superimpose Daniels into the scene. The images were taken at unrelated events months apart.

THE FACTS: As Donald Trump on Tuesday prepares to surrender himself and be arraigned in Manhattan on criminal charges stemming from 2016 hush money payments to Daniels, social media users are spreading an old, altered image of Trump with both his pregnant wife and Daniels.

“When Melania Trump looks at this picture today, knowing what we all know ….what is she thinking?” one Twitter user wrote, receiving more than 2,000 shares. The tweet was posted March 24, but was shared widely Tuesday ahead of the arraignment.

The edited image was also shared widely in 2018.

But the photo is not genuine. The image of Donald and Melania Trump was taken in 2005 at Fashion Group International’s Night of Stars, according to different images of the event taken by the AP.

“Donald Trump and his pregnant wife Melania Knauss arrive to the Fashion Group International’s 22nd Annual Night of Stars, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005, in New York,” reads the caption on the AP photo, which shows the Trumps in the same clothing that can be seen in the image circulating recently.

Another angle of the image can be found on Shutterstock, which shows Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump beside Melania Trump, who was pregnant at the time. The former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his spouse at the time can also be seen beside Donald Trump on the left.

Meanwhile, the image of Daniels was taken in 2006 at the AVN Awards, a porn industry award show. It was then digitally inserted into the image of the Trumps.

Theoriginal image can be found online in the photo archive Wikimedia Commons. Similar images of Daniels taken at the ceremony that night are also archived on Shutterstock.

Donald Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges. The investigation is scrutinizing his alleged involvement in six-figure payments made to Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both say they had sexual encounters with the married Trump years before he got into politics. Trump denies having sexual liaisons with either woman and has denied any wrongdoing involving payments.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, paid Daniels through a shell company before being reimbursed by Trump, whose company, the Trump Organization, logged the reimbursements as legal expenses, the AP has reported.

Cohen pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payments. Federal prosecutors say the payments amounted to illegal, unreported assistance to Trump’s campaign, although they declined to file charges against the former president himself at the time.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.