Does a viral screenshot show a real post by California Governor Gavin Newsom's Press Office asking Russia to release the Epstein files if they "are listening"? No, that's not true: The satirical post which also mentions "Big Balls" appears to be a Truth Social post and the account that supposedly published it does not exist there. The message also didn't appear on Newsom's Press Office X account which has recently been posting messages copying the style and wording of President Trump's social media posts.
One example of the image appeared on Reddit (archived here) where it was published on August 18, 2025. The text in the post shown in the image read:
RUSSIA IF YOU ARE LISTENING, DONALD (TINY HANDS) TRUMP HAS NOT RELEASED THE EPSTEIN FILES. IF YOU CAN FIND THEM YOU WILL BE REWARDED MIGHTILY BY OUR PRESS.
IF YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, CHECK WITH BIG BALLS, HE MAY HAVE COPIES ON HIS BIG HARD DISK.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION IN THIS MATTER. GCN
This is what the screenshot looked like:
(Image source: screenshot of post by Visible_Iron_5612 on Reddit)
The screenshot mentions "ReTruths", which are a feature of the Truth Social social network, and it was attributed to a @GovPressOffice account there. However, such an account did not exist there at the time of writing (archived here).
Lead Stories also searched Newsom's actual @GovPressOffice account on X for the phrase "RUSSIA IF YOU ARE LISTENING" and no results were returned (archived here).
All screenshots of the supposed post that Lead Stories reviewed showed exactly the same "ReTruths" (87) and "Likes" (314) counts and they all had the same background color and layout. If the post had been real the expectation would be that there were more screenshots circulating showing different view counts and/or layouts (night vs. day mode, mobile vs. web interface...).
The text in the fake post appears to be a reference to a 2016 quote from Trump (archived here):
"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said in a July 27, 2016 news conference.
