Fake Jeffrey Epstein Flight Logs Lead QAnon Crazies to Target Chrissy Teigen and Beyoncé
On the last day of July, Billboard tweeted an article titled: “5 Crowning Achievements in Beyoncé’s ‘Black is King’ Film.” The piece was a basic reaction roundup and the promotional tweet was equally innocuous. But for a Twitter user in the comments—a YA author named Kate Morris, who claims her apocalyptic romance novels were inspired after “Reagan came to [her] in a dream”—the post belied something more sinister. Morris replied with a fuzzy screenshot of a list, adding: “Let’s talk about why she’s on the #EpsteinFlightLogs.”
The tweet has since been deleted, but the screenshot remains all over the internet, often under posts by or about celebrities. A month earlier, when Ben Affleck urged residents of New York, Kentucky, and Virginia to vote in their primaries, a user left it in the comments. Here it is again beneath a Forbes piece on the #OscarsSoWhite scandal. And again, under an Entertainment Tonight Canada article from March titled “Eminem Gushes Over Daughter Hailie.” An image search for the graphic turned up similar lists under a HuffPost video of Beyonce’s commencement address, an interview with then-presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and archival footage of a Tom Brokaw speech from 1973.
The screenshot features a list of 124 names—many of them famous: Beyoncé, Eminem, Chrissy Teigen, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, to name a few—typed in three columns. The text appears on a light purple background, resembling the layout of the neo-Nazi-friendly imageboard site 8kun, formerly known as 8chan. As Morris implied, it is supposed to be a flight log detailing the high-profile figures who flew on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet, dubbed “The Lolita Express.”