Altered Lindsey Graham photo circulates as senator pushes Russia sanctions

"Declassified: Photo of Lindsay Graham with Osama Bin Laden and John McCain," says text over the picture, which spells Graham's first name wrong and was shared by a right-wing influencer who goes by "Gunther Eagleman" in a June 4, 2025 post on X.

"Make sense yet?" Eagleman asked his 1.4 million followers in his post, which has since been deleted.

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Screenshot from X taken June 4, 2025

Similar posts quickly spread across Facebook in the days after Republican Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal -- who have been leading a push in Congress for tough new US sanctions on Russia -- traveled to Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The diplomatic effort sparked calls from former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon for Donald Trump to condemn and arrest Graham, who is also a longtime ally of the president.

But the image of Graham and McCain -- a military veteran who died in 2018 and whom Trump frequently derided -- is doctored. The two men were not standing with bin Laden.

A reverse image search surfaced the original photo, which captured the two lawmakers beside the then-Afghan leader Karzai, on McCain's X account (archived here).

"Senator @GrahamBlog and I met with President Karzai yesterday as well #Afghanistan," McCain wrote.

The post is dated July 4, 2013 -- years after bin Laden died in a US raid on his home in Pakistan in 2011.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.