Photos shared online in early August 2024 authentically show a young Kamala Harris in provocative clothing at her work as an escort.
In early August 2024, social media users claimed that three widely circulated images showed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in a series of revealing outfits. Numerous captions stated that these images showed the young Harris as an “escort.”
One caption read: “San Francisco staffers come forward to say Kamala Harris worked as an escort for judges, politicians and various powerful business people to influence court cases and help push left-wing policies in the state.”
The three photos can be seen in the two X-posts below (the left photo is repeated in both posts).
(X-User @IDentect)
(X-User @ArmaLite15OU812)
While we were unable to find an authentic source for the photos, one expert told Snopes that his theory was that the images were of poor quality and did not feature Harris at all. There was also no evidence that Harris was ever an “escort” as the captions claimed. Taking these and several other points listed below into consideration, we rated the photos and the claims associated with them as “False.”
Using numerous reverse image search tools, we found that the photos appear to have begun circulating on Facebook, Instagram, X, and 4chan in early August, shortly after Harris officially declared her presidential candidacy.
A Reddit post (archived) and a Facebook post attributed the images to a certain “Glenn Sparks” on Facebook; however, Snopes could not find the images on Sparks’ account. The latter Facebook post said the photo showed Harris in the 1980s “with Montel Williams (a television host and actor) at an awards ceremony.” One of the earliest similar posts was published by an Instagram account that also posted the images of Harris.
Analysis of each individual photo
Starting with the second pair of photos, which showed a woman in slightly different black and purple outfits, the person bore some resemblance to the Vice President, but upon inspection, it did not appear to be Harris.
Snopes shared the images with Hany Farid, a professor who specializes in digital forensics and image analysis at the University of California, Berkeley. We tried to determine whether artificial intelligence (AI) or image-editing software was used to place Harris’ head on another woman’s body, or if some other manipulation took place.
Farid, who analyzed both photos with the woman in black, told Snopes: “The quality of the image is pretty poor, which makes analysis difficult. But I find no obvious signs that the image was artificially created. I think it’s more likely that it’s a cheap fake and the person is simply not (Harris).”
He also ran the photo on the right through a biometric facial recognition system and found that it didn’t match Harris at all. Farid sent us a GIF (see below) comparing Harris’ face to that of the woman in one of the photos. Even though it was a much younger picture of Harris, the shape and structure of the ears didn’t match, and neither did the eyes.
“I compared the face in the photo to a recent photo of Harris and you can see that there are significant differences in the shape of the ears (although they are not unique, the shape/structure of the ears was used as a biometric feature),” he told us.
(Hany Farid)
Farid also used the biometric facial recognition system on the woman in the red dress from the first pair of photos and found that it matched Harris. However, he explained: “This is most likely a simple Photoshop manipulation, but the resolution/quality of the image is too low for me to say anything definitive about it.”
Snopes then let the pictures through
Why we rated every picture as “Wrong”
The posts containing the images contained no links to authentic reports about the photos, no details about their origin, no credible evidence other than the poor quality of the images themselves, which immediately made the images suspect.
If the claims that Harris was an “escort” or these photos were true, both would be highly newsworthy and the mainstream media would have investigated them. However, Snopes found no evidence that news outlets reported on Harris’s work as an escort or claimed the images were authentic. Furthermore, if the images had been of a young Harris, the photos would have been more widely circulated before August 2024.
Snopes, the BBC and MSNBC have all previously reported on other authentic photos of Harris from the 1980s, none of which resembled the three photos above.
We’ve also reached out to other experts to see if the images may have been doctored, and to the Harris campaign for their input. We’ll update this article if we learn more.
Since Harris was nominated as a presidential candidate, false claims about her have proliferated, many of them related to her race and gender. Such racist and misogynistic statements are common on the campaign trail. In the past, we reported on the false claim that Harris cannot run for president because her parents were born abroad.
