A claim has gone viral on social media, which states that California US House Rep. Ted Lieu played a recording of Kash Patel at his US House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Jeffrey Epstein files row.
The posts go on to state that in the video, Patel purportedly states in the video that Trump told him to “bury” the Epstein files. It then claims that Patel invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to deny answering Lieu’s questions on the video.
However, Ht.com can confirm that the video is fake. First up, the posts suggested that the Patel underwent a House Judiciary Committee hearing in March 2026, which is not the case. Patel last testified before the Committee on September 17, 2025, during an oversight hearing on the FBI.
Additionally, there are no credible reports of Ted Lieu playing a clip on reputable news outlets. Snopes reports that the claim originated as a hoax from the Facebook page ‘Morning Current.’ Though explicitly not a parody page, the Snopes report states that the page routinely posts misleading clickbait content with affiliate links.
The claim then spread to YouTube, with a page called Silent Docket posting a video that gained hundreds of thousands of views. Here’s the video:
This story is being updated
