Photo purporting to show scantily-clad potential U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi running is altered
The photo currently circulating on X has been altered to make it look like Pam Bondi running in her underwear
CLAIM
A photo circulating on social media claims to show Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s pick to be Attorney General, jogging while wearing nothing but her underwear.
Pam Bondi became President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General in November after his original pick, Matt Gaetz, withdrew himself from contention because of various investigations into his personal life.
Shortly after she was nominated, a photo began to circulate on social media purporting to show Bondi, a former Florida General Attorney, in her underwear appearing to be jogging next to a young man.
We came across it in this X post from November 22, which turned out to be just one of many examples. It was posted with the caption “ladies and gentlemen: Pam Bondi.”
Looking at the account we can see that it very active having posted almost 110.000 times, which is very often a sign that it is not credible.
Furthermore, the photo was tagged by X as “manipulated media” so we decided to look for the origin of the image.
METHOD
We did a reverse image search using Google’s Lens tool (Logo) which yielded a number of results showing the same photo.
However, none of the results gave us any immediate indication of the origin of the photo, so we had to look through the results individually. The earliest version we found was in this opinion piece in news outlet Orlando Weekly from 2013.
The piece was clearly satirical and claimed that then State Attorney General had taken part in a charity “undie run.”
As this was the earliest version it is likely that this is the source of the circulated image. However, it still didn’t tell us anything about a potential original version of the image to confirm our suspicion that it was doctored.
So we looked through more of the individual results which eventually took us to this post from August 2024 on Reddit forum called “Political Hotties.”
Looking at the comments, we noticed that one person called the photo “fake” and even provided a link to what they said was the unedited version.
We followed the link which took us to this Flickr page:
This page belongs to a university news outlet in Arizona and was posted on November 6, 2009, and described as taken the day before.
The caption says students had taken part in a run as “an ice breaker for homecoming.” The newspaper also published an article about the “undie run.”
Comparing the two pictures we can see that the sports outfit worn by the woman in the photo from the student newspaper is identical to that purportedly worn by Bondi in the photo posted to X. The phone in her hand is also identical, and so is the man seen next to the woman.
From this analysis, we can conclude that the photo circulated on X purported to be of Pam Bondi is an altered version of the version posted in 2009.
RATING
The photo currently circulating on X has been altered to make it look like Pam Bondi running in her underwear/sportswear.
SOURCES
X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: ladies and gentlemen Pam Bondi [Accessed 26 Nov. 2024].
X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: https://x.com/SnakeSkin_J [Accessed 26 Nov. 2024].
Manes, B. (2013). Available at Happytown: Pam Bondi exposed? Orlando Weekly. [online] [Accessed 26 Nov. 2024].
Reddit.com. (2024). Available at: Former Florida AG Pam Bondi [online] [Accessed 26 Nov. 2024].
Flickr. (2024). Available at: Undie Run. [online] [Accessed 26 Nov. 2024].
McDonnell, T. (2024). Available at The naked truth: Undie Run a stripped-down success. [online] [Accessed 26 Nov. 2024].