Rumor has it Ted Lieu played recording in Congress of Kash Patel admitting he was told to ‘bury’ Epstein investigation. Here’s the truth

Claim:

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing in March 2026, U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, played an audio recording of FBI Director Kash Patel admitting that he was told to “bury” the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

Evaluation:

In March 2026, a rumor spread online that Democratic U.S. Representative Ted Lieu had stolen an audio recording during a House Judiciary Committee hearing that allegedly captured FBI Director Kash Patel admitting that he was told to “bury” the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

For example, a Facebook post (archived) claimed in the claim shared on March 11 that Patel “was caught admitting that he was told to bury the Epstein investigation just 11 days into his term.” The post also claimed that Patel was exercising his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Other examples of the claim appeared at: Topics And Facebookand multiple Snopes readers contacted us To ask if the rumor is true.

(Morning Stream via Facebook)

First, we used search engines such as: bing, DuckDuckGo, Google And yahoo To find possible evidence from reliable sources that Lieu listened to Patel’s audio recording during the trial. If the story were true, journalists with reputable news outlets like the Associated Press or Reuters would have covered it widely. This was not the case.

Instead the rumor was fictional. originated from a source Facebook page called Sabah AkımıLinking to blog pages that use AI tools to create inspiring or shocking stories about public figures. Therefore, we evaluated this claim as false.

Creators of such content capitalize on social media users’ willingness to believe and share made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which posts link. (Snopes previously reported about business strategy.)

We reached out to the administrator of the Morning Current page and asked why Lieu created a fake story without a disclaimer stating that the audio evidence against Patel was not real. The bounce of the contact email provided also showed that the page was not sharing the original content. We’ll update this story if we hear back.

The following links were included in the comments section of some posts spreading the false rumor about Lieu and Patel: articles On WordPress blogs. Comments promised more details about the alleged audio recording in the links. For example, a post promoted this story full of ads.

The text of the article contained clear signs of AI manufacturing, including emotionally charged but vague language and inaccurate details. For example, the article claimed that the evidence emerged during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on March 10, 2026, but Official calendar of the US Congress It showed that no such meeting was held that day.

GPTZeroa tool that aims to detect artificial intelligence-generated text, also determined with 100% certainty that the article text was created by artificial intelligence.

(GPTZero)

Let’s point out here: Such artificial intelligence detection tools can be inaccurate. Snopes warns people not to use them to get definitive answers without supporting evidence of the media’s authenticity.

Snopes has debunked similar rumors before. For example, we tracked down a source in March 2026 wrong story It’s about a network of tunnels spread by similar methods, located under a luxury mansion in Minneapolis owned by “prominent immigration lawyers.”

Sources:

“Committee Program.” Congress.Gov, United States Congress, March 10, 2026, https://www.congress.gov/committee-schedule/daily/2026/03/10.