Did Rep. Ted Lieu say that the full, unreleased Epstein files show Donald Trump raping children? No, that's not true: Lieu said at a February 3, 2026, news conference that the files include "highly disturbing allegations" of Donald Trump raping and threatening to kill children. He did not reference "unreleased" files, or say that child rapes are seen in them. The California Democrat was urging reporters to look into the allegations.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared by @allenanalysis X account on February 18, 2026. The post included a real video, but with a false description that read:
🚨 MAJOR BOMBSHELL: Ted Lieu says the full, unreleased Epstein files show Donald Trump R*PING children.
That's what's being hidden.
That's why the files stay sealed.
That's why there are no arrests.Release everything. Let the truth come out. Or RESIGN!
This is what the first frame of the video looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
Lieu, who is the vice chair of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House, accused Republicans of subpoenaing former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify as a distraction from references to President Trump in the Epstein files. His statement opened:
So why are Republicans so interested in Bill and Hillary Clinton? It's because they're trying to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times. In those files, there's highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children. So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations.
Lieu never claimed the files "show" rapes or threats. His statement continued:
And I'm highly disturbed that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche just got the law wrong yesterday. He said essentially that it is not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein. Well, that's actually not correct. If Jeffrey Epstein was human trafficking minors for these sex parties and you show up and patronize the establishment at that party, yes, you're guilty, because patronizing is part of the law--the federal sex trafficking law. So Deputy Attorney General Blanche just got that wrong, which maybe explains why they aren't investigating all these folks, including Donald Trump. He needs to read the law and investigate these people. He also needs to resign, not only for not knowing the law, but for a massive--not only a screw-up, but the biggest privacy violation in history. They released a lot of pictures of minors unredacted. They just violated the privacy of these girls. It is uncalled for, what they did. The one thing that they could not do under this law was to invade the privacy of these women now, who were girls at the time, who were victims of sex trafficking. Also, he met with Ghislaine Maxwell, moved her to a minimum-security prison, and then got a puppy for her. So for all those reasons, he's just got to leave the Department of Justice.
This is the same video (archived here) as hosted on the C-Span website:
