Don’t buy into alleged Trump post addressing ‘dog that hasn’t barked’ email from Epstein

Claim:

U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was a “total creep” and said, “The dog didn’t bark because the dog didn’t have time! Too busy making the country great, building towers, eating tremendous steaks.”

Rating:

Context

The alleged post was purportedly in response to an email between convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from April 2, 2011, that called Trump the “dog that hasn’t barked.” The email was included in documents from the Epstein estate released Nov. 12, 2025, by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump took to social media to react to a recently released email from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein circulated online in November 2025. 

Users on social media spread the alleged post on platforms such as Threads (archived) and particularly Facebook (archived, archived, archived), asserting its authenticity. The rumor spread as the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released more than 20,000 documents to the public on Nov. 12, 2025, including multiple emails that mentioned Trump. 

Trump’s response purportedly read: 

Lots of fake stories today about some guy named “Jeffrey Epstein” — total creep, nobody liked him, everybody says I was the dog that didn’t bark. Well guess what? The dog didn’t bark because the dog didn’t have time! Too busy making the country great, building towers, eating tremendous steaks. Now the fake news is saying “Sir, didn’t you know him?” I might’ve seen him once at a party, maybe twice, maybe never — who knows! I meet millions of people, all of them say “Sir, greatest handshake ever!” But if the dog didn’t bark, it means the dog was innocent. Brilliant logic!

The screenshot of the alleged post by Trump was a fake. 

A search of Trump’s Truth (archived), a comprehensive and searchable archive of Trump’s Truth Social posts revealed no such declaration from Trump. A further search of Trump’s native Truth Social feed and other social media platforms such as X and Facebook also returned no relevant results. 

In addition, the user interface and user avatar that appeared in the alleged screenshot do match the reality of Trump’s Truth Social page, as shown below. 

For instance, the avatar on the president’s official page features his portrait stylized with an American flag, while the screenshot of the supposed post does not. Further, Truth Social labels its reposts as “ReTruths,” which is not present in the screenshot, nor is the date or time the post was allegedly made. 

(Truth Social)

Trump did, in fact, post about the deluge of Epstein documents on Truth Social on Nov. 12, 2025, calling it a “hoax” and claimimg Democrats were trying to “deflect” responsibility for the government shutdown that ended in November 2025. 

His full post read:

The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price. There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!

Trump followed that post a short time later with another that said, “In other words, the Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one — THE SHUTDOWN!”

For further reading about the Nov. 12, 2025, release of documents from Epstein’s estate, check out Snopes’ reporting on the Epstein emails thus far.