Organizers behind a 12-foot statue depicting President Donald Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands have claimed they got a new permit for the statue after it was removed, but that it had been revoked again “without explanation.”
The story of the pop-up statue has been just as tumultuous as the Epstein files saga itself. As the Trump administration continues to face backlash over its handling of documents related to the sex offender, the scrutiny the president has faced for his decades-old relationship with Epstein has piled on.
Early Tuesday morning, the Trump-Epstein statue appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It included plaques containing excerpts from the lewd birthday letter Trump is alleged to have sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has vehemently denied that he authored such a card.
The Secret Handshake, a tiny anonymous group claiming to be behind the statue, previously told The Independent their creation was destroyed early Wednesday morning.
“They showed up in the middle of the night without notice and physically toppled the statue, broke it, and took it away,” the organizers said, despite having a permit for the statue to remain in place until Sunday.
National Park Police told WUSA9 that the statue did not comply with its permit but it did not explain the nature of the violation.
The Secret Handshake told The Independent Thursday it had applied for a new permit Wednesday, which was approved, and was supposed to go into effect Thursday afternoon.
“We re-obtained the statue, repaired it, and were in transit to the location when the permit was prematurely revoked without explanation by the Deputy Director of the [National Park Service] NPS,” a spokesperson for the group said.
The spokesperson said the spot where the statue was meant to return “was full of city police, parks police, and other unmarked vehicles ready to jump into action were we to exercise the rights of our what we had been told was an approved permit.”
The Independent has reached out to the U.S. Park Police and the National Mall and Memorial Parks, where the group applied for the permit, for comment.
A White House spokesperson previously denounced the statue, telling The Independent: “Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit – but it’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep.”
Trump and Epstein were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s, but their relationship dissolved around the mid-2000s.
In the alleged birthday card, that was widely reported on and later released by the House Oversight Committee earlier this month, Trump told Epstein, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story about the card, for $10 billion, claiming defamation.
Lawyers for the WSJ have hit back against the lawsuit and asked for a dismissal, this week writing, “The Article is true.”
After Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, Trump said he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail just over a month after he was arrested.
