CHRISTIANSTED — Rumors are running rampant on the Internet with President Joe Biden returning to his “winter home” in St. Croix for a New Year’s celebration of the year to come — 2024.
CLAIM: President Joe Biden owns an island next to one previously owned by the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
OUR ASSESSMENT: False. Biden does not own physical property in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to online property records and a White House spokesperson. James Biden, the president’s brother, bought land in the territory with his wife in 2005, according to the records.
THE FACTS: Claims about Joe Biden’s alleged Caribbean holdings have spread widely on social media in recent days. Epstein once owned the Great St. James and Little St. James islands in the U.S. territory before they were recently sold to a U.S. investor for $60 million, the Virgin Islands Free Press reported in early May.
One Instagram video shows text reading, “When you find out who owns the island next to Epsteins,” before cutting to a video of a man saying, “Spoiler alert: It’s Joe Biden.” The video has garnered more than 19,000 likes since it was posted Sunday.
One Instagram video shows text reading, “When you find out who owns the island next to Epsteins,” before cutting to a video of a man saying, “Spoiler alert: It’s Joe Biden.” The video has garnered more than 19,000 likes since it was posted Sunday.
The notion is baseless. Online property records for the U.S. Virgin Islands show that the president does not own any property in the territory.
Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the White House, wrote in an email to The Associated Press that the online claims are “false.”
Online property records in the database run by the territory’s Recorder of Deeds Office show that James and Sara Biden bought an approximately 1-acre property in the territory on Water Island in 2005. Water Island is roughly eight miles from Little St. James.
The Virgin Islands are a familiar getaway for the president. Joe Biden has visited St. Croix at least since he was vice president, from 2009 to 2017, the Associated Press reported. A December visit to St. Croix was Biden’s first trip to the territory as president. St. Croix is more than 30 miles from Little St. James.
Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trail in 2019. He had been accused of federal sex trafficking charges and pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually abusing dozens of girls, some as young as 14 years old. Authorities said some of the girls had been brought to his home in the Caribbean. Little St. James was nicknamed “Pedophile Island” by locals.
This is part of the V.I. Freep’s mandate to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online.
