Did a "Breaking" news story show White House lawyers worried that Rep. Lauren Boebert and Rep. Nancy Mace had recorded phone calls in which President Donald Trump "begged" them to vote against release of the Epstein files by the FBI? No, that's not true: There was no such report and the rumor started on a social media satire page. The original poster of the meme is an account that describes its content as satire and says "I troll the Trump Administration every day."
The hoax was re-posted in a November 12, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the johnsmithmarketingnashville account under a "Breaking" headline. It continued
White House lawyers are reportedly worried Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace recorded their phone calls with Trump where he begged, bribed, threatened, and cried for them to reverse their votes on releasing the Epstein files.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of meme posted at facebook.com/johnsmithmarketingnashville.)
The meme originated on the X account @HalfwayPost (archived here). The @HalfwayPost account describes its content as "Halfway true comedy and satire ..."
(Image source: account bio section of @HalfwayPost on X.)
In a response to one commenter, The Halfway Post on Nov. 12, 2025, wrote back:
I troll the Trump Administration every day. Subscribe to my Substack and get my liberal comedy sent right to your inbox: thehalfwaycafe.substack.com
To ensure the parodist hadn't accidentally published a true report, Lead Stories searched the Google News index (archived here) of thousands of news sites and the index of Yahoo News' partner news sites and news services (archived here), finding no such breaking news story.
