Rumors that a United States senator had seen a video of U.S. President Donald Trump raping a child circulated online in March 2026.
Users on social media, particularly on X (archived, archived), spread the rumor and claimed the alleged video was part of the Department of Justice's files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A US senator has seen a video from the Epstein files of Donald Trump raping a child, a minor.
Let that sink in for a moment.— KT "Special MI6 Operation" (@KremlinTrolls) March 11, 2026
We found no evidence that any U.S. politician, senator or otherwise, made such a statement publicly. A search of Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo revealed no credible news outlets reporting news of such a claim, which would have been widely covered had such revelatory information been made public.
We have left this claim unrated because we cannot definitively determine whether such a video exists or if a U.S. politician has privately claimed to have seen one.
The rumor appeared to be a misinterpretation of a statement made by a U.S. representative — not a senator — in February 2026 exacerbated by high public interest in the Epstein case.
The claim likely originated with a statement made by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., on Feb. 3. During a news conference, viewable on C-SPAN, he said:
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.
Lieu shared a video of his statement to his X account the same day. Lieu also reposted a clip shared by an X user who added, "That's a sitting member of Congress, on the record, describing what's in the files."
After Lieu's news conference, rumors circulated that Lieu claimed "unreleased" Epstein files "showed" Trump raping children.
Fact-checking organization LeadStories debunked that claim at the time, pointing out that Lieu merely referenced allegations of child rape against Trump, not that he viewed definitive video evidence. Further, Lieu never mentioned "unreleased" files in his statement.
Snopes reached out to Lieu's office for comment on the intent behind his statement. A spokesperson confirmed via email that he was not claiming he saw any such video, just that the publicly released files contained allegations of such an act.
Further, while Lieu did mention Trump specifically at the news conference, he was primarily calling for the resignation of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over comments Blanche made during a Feb. 2, 2026, appearance on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" in which he said it wasn't a crime to party with Epstein.
The rest of Lieu's statement on Feb. 3 addressed Blanche's comment specifically:
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.
The virality of Lieu's comments and the public's ongoing interest in the Epstein case likely contributed to the evolution of an unfounded rumor about a "senator" having seen a video of Trump raping a child.