A massive statue depicting Donald Trump and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands has appeared on the National Mall as the months-long Epstein Files saga continues to haunt the administration.
The 12-foot statue â a combination of foam, resin, wood and wire â shows Trump and Epstein standing on pedestals, holding hands and smiling at one another as they appear about to frolic through the park toward the Washington Monument in Washington, DC.
Below the statue, there are three plaques, two of which contain excerpts from the bawdy birthday letter Trump allegedly wrote Epstein for his 50th birthday.
A copy of the letter, featuring a hand-drawn figure of a naked woman along with the presidentâs reported signature, was made public this month by the House Oversight Committee. Trump has denied any involvement with the letter, even suing the Wall Street Journal, which first published a report about it for $10 billion, claiming that âno authentic letter or drawing exists.â
The statue appeared early Tuesday morning in honor of Friendship Month. It will remain there until Saturday, a spokesperson for The Secret Handshake, an anonymous group of fewer than five individuals who put up the statue, told The Independent. The statue is about âcelebrating the friendship of these real men.â
A White House spokesperson denounced the National Mallâs new addition, telling The Independent in a statement: âLiberals are free to waste their money however they see fit â but itâs not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep. Democrats, the media, and the organization thatâs wasting their money on this statue knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents.â
âThereâs very few people who have gone on the record and called Trump one of his good friends,â the spokesperson said.
The friendship between the two men is well-documented.
The pair were photographed together at parties in the 1990s and early 2000s, including at Trumpâs 1993 wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Trump called Epstein a âterrific guy” in a 2002 New York Magazine article, while recordings of Epstein, obtained by the Daily Beast last year, captured the convicted sex offender describing himself as Trumpâs âclosest friend.â
Their friendship dissolved around the mid-2000s. After Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019, the president told reporters he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years; in July, Trump revealed that he had ended his friendship with Epstein after he âstoleâ young female employees from his private club. The president has repeatedly called the late financier a âcreepâ in recent months.
While the president has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein case, Trumpâs friendship with Epstein has been under the microscope since July, when the DOJ released a memo putting an end to years-long conspiracy theories around Epsteinâs sudden 2019 death.
He died by suicide behind bars while awaiting his sex trafficking trial and there is no evidence to support the existence of a so-called âclient listâ of wealthy, famous figures involved in his alleged sex trafficking, the FBI concluded. The DOJ also stated that no âfurther disclosure would be appropriate or warrantedâ related to the case, mere months after it released âPhase 1â of the Epstein files.
Survivors of Epsteinâs abuse, members of Congress, and even some of his MAGA following have grown incensed over the Trump administrationâs handling of the case, calling for increased transparency around the Epstein Files. Earlier this month, the DOJ released tens of thousands of Epstein files, most of which were already publicly available, according to lawmakers.
Some survivors have said they are creating a database of people involved, creating their own âclient list.â
