Ted Lieu TRAPS Patel with Epstein Signature Document — Director Stumbles LIVE I Didn't Review Meltdown

In this video, we break down the House Judiciary Committee hearing where Congressman Ted Lieu questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about the Epstein files and what he has personally reviewed. During the hearing, Patel confirmed under oath that he had not personally reviewed all of the Epstein files, yet still made statements about what the files do and do not contain. The exchange raised major questions about the Epstein investigation, document releases, subpoena authority, and what information remains unreleased. Watch the full breakdown of this House Judiciary Committee hearing, the Epstein files discussion, and the key moments that are now part of the congressional record.

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Today — September 17th, 2025 — inside the House Judiciary Committee chamber, something happened that no one on either side of that hearing room was prepared for. Not because of the question itself. Not because of the document. But because of the sequence. Because eight minutes before Ted Lieu asked his most devastating question, Eric Swalwell had already extracted the admission that made Lieu's question impossible to escape. Swalwell asked Patel directly: have you personally reviewed all the Epstein files? Patel answered: I have not reviewed the entirety of the files. Swalwell said: you haven't reviewed all of the Epstein files? Patel said: personally, no. Swalwell looked at him for exactly one second. Then he said: you're the director of the FBI. This is the largest sex trafficking case the FBI has ever been a part of. The buck stops at the top. And your testimony today is you have not reviewed all the files. That exchange set the trap. What Ted Lieu did eight minutes later was spring it. He came to the microphone carrying two things. A laptop. And a document that had been released three weeks earlier by the House Oversight Committee. A document bearing what appears to be a handwritten signature over the name Donald Trump. Inside a page described as a birthday book kept by Jeffrey Epstein. And when Lieu was finished, Kash Patel had been forced to tell the House Judiciary Committee, under oath, that the only basis for his knowledge of what the Epstein files contain is not personal review. It is the assumption that if something damaging had existed, someone else, in some other administration, would have found it.

Watch this video until the very end because what those two moments together — Swalwell's personally, no and Lieu's confrontation with the birthday signature document — produce in the congressional record is the single most consequential public documentation of the gap between what the director of the FBI claims to know about the Epstein investigation and what he has actually examined. And if you are new here, subscribe right now and turn on notifications because this five-hour hearing also featured Jamie Raskin playing a recorded video of Patel on a podcast saying the Epstein client list hasn't been released because of who's on that list — Patel's own words, from before he was director, now used as the opening statement in the hearing that just dismantled his credibility on every question about those files.

Let me give you the full scene because you need to understand what the room looked like and what had already happened before Lieu stood up. This is Patel's second consecutive day of congressional testimony. Tuesday was the Senate Judiciary Committee. Wednesday is the House Judiciary Committee. And House Democrats had spent five hours developing a coordinated approach to this hearing that was unlike anything that had appeared in the Senate the day before. Jamie Raskin opened with the video of Patel on Benny Johnson's show from 2023, when Johnson asked why the Epstein list hasn't been released and Patel answered: simple, because of who's on that list. Patel had no response to those words when played back to him. He pivoted to saying he was referring to the legal process. But the clip had done what Raskin designed it to do. It established, in the first ten minutes of a five-hour hearing, that Kash Patel once believed he knew who was on that list and believed their presence was the reason for the suppression. The question the entire room then spent five hours circling was whether he still believes that now and whether being inside the FBI has given him additional reasons to protect those names. Raskin had a poster behind him for most of the hearing. The poster showed the document the House Oversight Committee released earlier in September: a page from what investigators describe as Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book, featuring a silhouette of a woman's body and what appears to be a handwritten letter inside the drawing, signed with the name Donald Trump. Trump has denied writing it. The denial itself became a line of questioning that produced one of the hearing's strangest moments, when Moskowitz asked if the FBI would investigate Epstein's estate for releasing a fake document with the president's signature. Patel first said: on what basis? And then, when Moskowitz pressed the logic that a president claiming a document is forged is itself a basis for investigation, Patel said he would investigate. A sitting FBI director committing to investigate a document his own president said was fake, in order to demonstrate the document is fake, while standing next to the poster of that document. The room understood immediately that no good answer existed. But that moment was only the second most damaging Lieu exchange of the day. The first one came earlier and it is the one that produced the clip.

If you are still watching, hit the like button right now. Drop a comment below. Because I need to stop right here and tell you what Lieu played before he asked the question. He played a video. Not a secret video. A publicly available interview with journalist Michael Wolff, who reported that Jeffrey Epstein had once shown him photographs and described to him a conversation involving Donald Trump. Lieu let the clip play. Then he looked at Patel. Are there any photos, he asked, showing Donald Trump with girls of an uncertain age? Patel said: no. Lieu said: how do you know that? And here is where everything Swalwell had built eight minutes earlier came crashing into the exchange. Because Patel could not say: because I reviewed the files and there were no such photos. He had just testified, under oath, that he had not personally reviewed the entirety of the Epstein files. So he could not say he had looked. He had to say something else. And what he said was the most damaging sentence of the five-hour hearing. He said: because that information would have been brought to light by multiple administrations and FBI investigators over the course of the last twenty years. Comment below: if your evidence that something doesn't exist is that someone else would have found it, and you haven't personally looked, what is the quality of that evidence?

The room recognized immediately what had happened. Patel had testified that the Epstein files contained nothing showing Trump with underage girls. When pressed on how he knew, he revealed that his knowledge was not based on personal review. It was based on the assumption that previous administrations and investigators would have surfaced it if it existed. That is not evidentiary knowledge. That is assumption. And it is assumption made by a director who has just admitted he has not personally reviewed the files in question. Ted Lieu is a former JAG officer in the United States Air Force. He spent years as a military lawyer. He has conducted interrogations. He knows what it means when a witness testifies to something without having examined the underlying evidence. He did not let it go. He moved to the document. He held up the page released by the House Oversight Committee. The birthday book entry. The silhouette of a woman. The apparent signature. He described it precisely for the record. He asked Patel: do the Epstein files contain this document? Patel said the investigation had revealed documents with Trump's name in them and that those had been released. He did not answer whether this specific document was in the files. Lieu pressed: was this document in the Epstein files held by the FBI? Patel said: the Epstein estate has a voluminous amount of information that they have not released. He added: you raise a great point. Lieu heard the deflection to the estate and took it exactly where Patel should have seen coming. Director, he said, wouldn't it be great if the FBI subpoenaed the estate of Jeffrey Epstein for all of the information? Patel's response was the one that produced the second viral clip of the exchange. He said: the estate is under no obligation to provide that material even pursuant to a subpoena. Lieu looked at him. He said: that's just false. You're the frickin' FBI.

The room erupted. Not the polite murmur of engaged spectators but the sudden noise of people who have just heard a congressman say out loud to a federal law enforcement director exactly what millions of people watching on C-SPAN were thinking. Because Patel's claim was incorrect on its face. The FBI has subpoena authority. Federal investigators subpoena private estates routinely in criminal matters. The suggestion that a federal subpoena carries no obligation on the receiving party represents a fundamental misstatement of how federal investigative authority operates. And Lieu's response captured exactly that. You're the frickin' FBI. Patel tried to clarify that the estate might contest the subpoena in court. Lieu said: then fight it in court. You were saying before you became director that the FBI director has direct control over releasing this information. Now you're telling me you can't even subpoena the estate. He paused. What changed? Patel said: the legal landscape around the Epstein investigation is complex and court orders restrict what the FBI can and cannot do. Lieu said: you don't know if the FBI subpoenaed the Wolff tapes, do you? Patel said: I don't know if the FBI subpoenaed the Wolff tapes, no. Lieu looked at him. You don't know if you subpoenaed the journalist's recordings of the man at the center of the largest sex trafficking investigation in American history. He set his document down. And you haven't personally reviewed the files. And your evidence that there are no photos is that someone else would have found them. He looked directly at Patel. Director, how are you telling this committee anything about what is in the Epstein files?

Patel's response moved to institutional defense language. He said the FBI's career professionals had conducted thorough reviews. He said the releases made so far were legally authorized. He said the bureau has committed to transparency within the bounds of applicable court orders. Lieu said: I'm going to ask you one more question and I want a yes or no answer. He held up the birthday document again. Is there anything in the FBI's possession that connects Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein's criminal activities in a way that has not yet been made public? Patel said: the FBI has released all credible information it is legally allowed to release. Lieu said: that is not a yes or no. Is there material in the FBI's possession connecting Trump to Epstein's criminal activities that has not been released? Patel said: the FBI has released all credible information. Lieu shook his head. He said: Director, I asked whether Donald Trump's name appears on Jeffrey Epstein's client list. Yes or no? Patel looked past Lieu at the committee staff behind the Democrats' table. He said: the DOJ has stated that there is no client list meeting prosecutorial standards. Lieu said: I didn't ask about a client list meeting prosecutorial standards. I asked if Donald Trump's name appears on any client list in the Epstein files. Patel said nothing for two seconds. Then he said the FBI had released an index of names. Lieu said: America, that's a huge red flag. The FBI director could not answer whether Donald Trump was on Epstein's client list. He gathered his papers. I yield back.

The five-hour hearing ended with the GOP majority blocking every single Democratic subpoena motion. Subpoena JPMorgan, Bank of New York, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank for the $1.5 billion in suspicious Epstein-related transactions? Blocked 20-19. Subpoena Treasury Secretary Bessent for suspicious activity reports? Blocked. Subpoena the Bureau of Prisons director for records on Ghislaine Maxwell's transfer to a minimum security facility? Blocked. Every subpoena motion, on a party-line vote, failed. What did not fail was the documentary record. Patel testified under oath on September 17th, 2025: I have not personally reviewed the entirety of the Epstein files. His basis for knowing there are no photos of Trump with underage girls: that previous administrations would have found them. His knowledge of the Michael Wolff tape subpoena status: I don't know. His answer to whether Trump appears on an Epstein client list: no direct answer. His legal analysis of the FBI's ability to subpoena the Epstein estate: incorrect, as Lieu noted on the record. Subscribe right now because the discharge petition Massie filed is one signature away from forcing a House floor vote on releasing all files, and this hearing is the reason that vote is coming. Share this everywhere. Personally, no. That is what the director of the FBI said about whether he had reviewed the files of the largest sex trafficking case in American history. Ted Lieu asked how he could testify to anything about what those files contain. Patel answered with institutional language. And Lieu left the answer in the record, unanswered, for a court, a committee, or a country to eventually address.