Did Kash Patel, Sen. John Kennedy, Pete Buttigieg, Vince Gill and others demand that former President Barack Obama return millions he earned through ownership related to "Obamacare"? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories that swap-in those and other names are part of an international network of websites and Facebook pages that publish fake news stories about famous people to generate traffic. The claim that Obama earns royalties on Obamacare originated with a satire web publisher who baits conservatives into re-posting fake stories.
A Patel version of the fake news story appeared in a Feb. 12, 2026 post (archived here) was published by the American Roots page on Facebook under the title "I wish this were just a joke, but it's not." It continued:
Kash Patel is now publicly demanding that Barack Obama return $120 million that he allegedly earned through ownership related to "Obamacare.""He allocated money under his own laws using taxpayer-generated prestige," Patel said, calling it "an abuse of public office and blatant influence."Obama has three days to respond before Kash Patel says the matter will be referred to the Department of Justice for formal review."There's nothing ethical or legal about this," Patel added.Details in the comments
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post on American Roots Facebook page.)
The American Roots Facebook page did not provide customary Transparency Tab information about the country of origin of its team. But the story promoted by the post appears on the HopeNote website, whose Terms of Service declarations list Vietnam as the home country of the site.
Additionally, the URL for the page on which the Patel story appears ends with a Vietnamese word : "phuongchi". Google Translate translates that word to English (archived here) as "method."
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here.
Given Obama's prominence and the fame of the multiple persons said to be demanding the return of fictional royalties, such claims would be newsworthy if the head of the FBI, a U.S. senator or the other famous persons listed were actually making them.
Lead Stories searched Google News for news articles mentioning "Obama", "payments" "ownership" and "Obamacare" and "Patel". The index of the contents of thousands of news sites did not locate any stories (archived here) mentioning those key words from the fake news posts.
The KASH PATEL DEMANDS OBAMA RETURN $120 MILLION story on HopeNote (archived here) included following passage:
The news of the $120 million demand has ignited a massive and polarized debate on the internet, with the hashtag #ReturnTheMoney trending alongside #DefendObama.
Lead Stories searched Facebook for instances of a #DefendObama hashtag, finding (archived here) zero examples of that hashtag in use. Similarly, no sign of a massive internet debate about Obama was turned up by a search on Facebook for the hashtag: #ReturnTheMoney (archived here).
A search on Facebook for the story's phrase: "He allocated money under his own laws using taxpayer-generated prestige" (archived here) brought up multiple results with almost exactly the same story but about different political and media figures, some not even from the U.S.
Lead Stories found posts involving:
- Jeanine Pirro
- Madonna
- Sen. John Kennedy
- Teresa Giudice
- Stephen Miller
- Peta Credlin
- Pete Buttigieg
- Vince Gill
- Kash Patel
- Jesse Watters
(Image source: Lead Stories animation of Facebook search results for the phrase "He allocated money under his own laws using taxpayer-generated prestige".)
Lead Stories has published a primer -- or a prebunk -- on how to identify these kinds of fake posts exported from Vietnam. It's titled "Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'"
