Colbert-Stewart Show on Epstein Victim’s Death Proven False, Part of Vietnamese Spam Network

A viral claim that Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart hosted a television program called “Freedom and Justice” discussing Virginia Giuffre’s death has been debunked as entirely fabricated. The alleged broadcast, which supposedly garnered one billion global views “in just one night,” appears to be part of a sophisticated spam operation originating from Vietnam.

The false narrative began circulating through multiple Facebook posts in late January, including one published by a page called “Open Sky Press.” The fabricated story claimed the show had reached an unprecedented audience by revealing “a truth suppressed for 12 years” regarding Giuffre, a known victim of Jeffrey Epstein.

According to the posts, the program supposedly featured no “emotional background music” or premature judgments, but rather presented “facts reassembled” and “heavy silences” that compelled viewers to confront hidden truths. The dramatic language described the broadcast not as mere entertainment but as “a test of truth.”

However, extensive searches across reputable news sources and entertainment industry publications yield no evidence that such a program ever existed. Google searches for terms related to the alleged show return only results from the same network of suspicious Facebook pages, all managed from Vietnam according to Meta’s transparency data.

Digital forensic analysis reveals these posts as part of what fact-checkers have dubbed “Viet Spam” – a coordinated operation using artificial intelligence to generate false, sensationalist content targeting American and European audiences. The operation appears designed to harvest engagement and potentially direct users to questionable websites.

One revealing mistake in the campaign was the inclusion of an image prompt written in Vietnamese that accidentally appeared in some posts, providing clear evidence of the content’s foreign origin. The prompt roughly translates to a description for generating an image featuring “one or more people, blonde hair, TV, Oval Office, newsroom.”

Further investigation of the website connected to these posts showed it publishes new AI-generated false stories at a remarkably rapid pace – every few minutes – which are then distributed across numerous inauthentic Facebook pages all managed from Vietnam.

Facebook’s transparency tools make it possible to verify the geographical location of page managers. Users can access this information by clicking on a page name, selecting the “Transparency and privacy policy” link, and viewing the countries where page administrators are located.

This operation is part of a broader pattern of Vietnamese-based disinformation that fact-checking organizations have been tracking for months. The network specializes in creating clickbait content about celebrities, political figures, and sensational topics designed to drive engagement regardless of factual accuracy.

Media literacy experts advise social media users to be particularly skeptical of emotionally charged stories about high-profile figures that aren’t reported by established news outlets. Additionally, checking page transparency information before engaging with content can help identify potentially inauthentic sources.

Numerous fact-checking organizations have published guidance on identifying these “Viet Spam” operations, including a comprehensive primer titled “Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities — How To Spot ‘Viet Spam.'”

As social media platforms continue working to address coordinated inauthentic behavior, this case highlights the evolving sophistication of cross-border disinformation operations and the increasing use of artificial intelligence to generate convincing but entirely fictional narratives.