Did comedians Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart or actor Tom Hanks broadcast a television program to disclose the names of numerous people not previously known to be implicated by the files of investigations into Jeffrey Epstein? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories mentioning those and others were published by a network of foreign websites and Facebook pages. There were no news articles about supposed live broadcasts or streams on social media.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on February 17, 2026. It opened:
BREAKING NEWS TONIGHT: THE WALL OF SILENCE TORN APART LIVE ON AIR - TWO LEGENDS OF AMERICAN TELEVISION, STEPHEN COLBERT AND TOM HANKS, HAVE NAMED 12 FIGURES FOR THE FIRST TIME MENTIONED IN PART TWO OF THE EPSTEIN FILES - JUST HOURS LATER, THE PROGRAM REACHED 1.2 BILLION VIEWS.
That moment came swiftly and decisively. On live broadcast, Stephen Colbert and Tom Hanks offered no more hints or detours. Each name in part two of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein was read aloud in an atmosphere thick with tension.
This is what an image attached to the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot from Facebook.)
The Facebook page "The News 247" (archived here), which was used to promote the story, had a page transparency tab indicating it was run by four people from Vietnam:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot from Facebook.)
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country that is a major source of AI-generated false stories usually employing celebrity names to increase readership. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here.
A search on Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) showed only two unrelated results, and none of them was from 2026. A search for the precise language from the post (archived here) returned only duplicates of the claim from Facebook.
The Facebook post reviewed in this article linked to a story (archived here) from the "Triforce347" website (archived here), published under the title:
C1 Breaking the Silence Live: Colbert and Hanks Name 12 in Epstein Files -- 1.2 Billion Views in Hours.
That website purported to function as a news outlet, but said nothing about the supposed editorial team behind it. According to WHOIS, it had a Brazilian IP address.
A search on Facebook for the keywords seen here showed multiple variations of the claim:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshots from Facebook)
Those nearly identical posts kept switching the key details: A supposed celebrity revealing the names, the number of those names and the number of the views the purported show generated.
Besides Colbert and Hanks, variations of the claim stated that the supposed announcement was made by:
- Jon Stewart (archived here)
- Jon Stewart and eight television hosts (archived here) Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Hasan Minhaj, Roy Wood Jr., Desi Lydic and Michael Che
- Jimmy Kimmel (archived here)
- Tom Hanks (archived here) making an independent announcement
- two congressmen, Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (archived here)
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'".
