Fact check: Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister not married to Dr Anthony Fauci, DeAnna Lorraine apologises for rumor
Ever since the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former lover and confidante of Jeffrey Epstein – a disgraced billionaire and convicted sex offender who mysteriously died last year – many bizarre rumors about the British socialite have surfaced online. Most of them are untrue. One such fake claim was that Dr. Anthony Fauci was married to Maxwell's sister.
Maxwell, who is accused of procuring underage girls in a potential sex trafficking ring operated by Epstein, was linked to Fauci by DeAnna Lorraine, a proponent of the “QAnon” movement who unsuccessfully tried to score a seat in U.S. Congress. In a presently deleted tweet from July 6, Lorraine wrote that Fauci, who is one of the lead members of the Trump Administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force, was married to Ghislaine's sister, Christine Maxwell.
"BREAKING: Dr. Fauci's wife is Ghislaine Maxwell's sister! And the plot thickens. I knew my instincts were right about Fauci. RETWEET! #FollowTheWives" she tweeted along with a picture of Fauci and his wife alongside a screenshot of the Wikipedia page of Maxwell’s sister, Christine Maxwell. However, although both Ghislaine's sister and Fauci's wife share the first name, the latter's full name is Christine Grady.
They are completely different entities which is proven by the fact that Christine Grady was born in New Jersey in 1952, while Christine Maxwell was born in France in 1950. Grady went on to complete her studies from Georgetown University, author hundreds of papers in the field of bioethics, and serve on the President’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017. Currently, she is the Chief of the Department of Bioethics for the National Institutes of Health.
Christine Maxwell, on the other hand, was a doctoral candidate a the University of Texas at Dallas in 2019. She also nd co-founded Magellan, one of the internet’s early search engines.
It was not long before Lorraine admitted her mistake and deleted her original tweet before replacing it with an apology for spreading fake news. "Sorry guys. True news is extremely important to me and I want to make sure something is 150% true and fact-checked before posting it. I’m getting different facts on the story about Fauci," she wrote on July 7.
She added in a separate tweet: "Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci’ wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, I’m sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun. I’m on the move, will make sure I spend more time researching moving forward'
When one of the social media users asked her why she had not conducted her due research before putting out a controversial tweet like that, she reiterated: "I did. But I should have done more. I got excited when people sent me this just like I’m sure you did! Im so sorry for posting this before having everything 150% air-tight. That was my fault."
Nevertheless, the damage was already done as multiple people accused her of spreading fake news. "Republicans/conservatives like DeAnna Lorraine are always talking about how Fake News is the enemy of the people (which is true), but then spread it so quickly without doing a simple google search to actually substantiate these wild claims. Ridiculous," one user wrote, while another said, "How on earth did you do your initial “fact check”? It took me all of a minute to find out who Fauci’s wife is. Not a difficult task."