A 12-foot statue of President Donald Trump and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands and prancing together was erected on the National Mall early Tuesday.
Three plaques appear alongside the satirical faux-bronze statues, courtesy of a mysterious group that goes by the name The Secret Handshake. The plaques note the statues are “in Honor of Friendship Month” in September.
“We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend’ Jeffrey Epstein,” one plaque reads.
Other plaques feature quotes from a bawdy birthday card Trump apparently once gave Epstein.
In a statement to HuffPost on Tuesday, the anonymous leader of the Secret Handshake said the statues speak for themselves.
“No one else publicly that we know of partied with Donald Trump, traveled with Donald Trump and visited at Mar-a-Lago just as a friend, not just as an associate. Since this is Friendship Month, we wanted to celebrate what is presumably, at least publicly, Donald Trump’s only true friend,” the group’s leader said.
Trump and Epstein spent over a decade running in the same social circles or attending various high-profile events and parties together. Trump also rode on Epstein’s private plane between New York and Florida. Trump had called Epstein a “terrific guy,” and Epstein said he believed he was Trump’s “closest friend.”
“He was a lot of fun to be with,” Trump told New York Magazine in 2002.
The two men had a falling-out many years ago, and by the time Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019, Trump insisted he was “not a fan.”
The Secret Handshake Group
The Secret Handshake Group
The Secret Handshake Group
Epstein died by suicide in federal prison a month after his arrest, kicking off a firestorm of questions, controversy and conspiracy theories about his death — and his life, especially his connection to wealthy elites who were introduced to young women or girls through the disgraced financier.
When Trump ran for president, he leaned heavily into conspiracy theories about Epstein and vowed to expose those involved.
But Trump’s thirst for transparency about Epstein’s crimes and associates has seemingly since vanished.
Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed in February that there was an Epstein “client list” on her desk at the Justice Department. A month later, however, the Justice Department and FBI released a statement saying Epstein never had a client list and that no further records tied to the Epstein probe would be made public.
That decision was controversial, even among Trump’s base and administration. Things only got worse for him in July, when The Wall Street Journal reported that the president’s name appeared many times in a “truckload” of documents reviewed by the Justice Department.
Demands for the so-called Epstein files to be released have intensified ever since, including from women who said they were abused by Epstein and his associate Ghislane Maxwell. A bipartisan push by members of Congress to have the files released is in limbo at the moment. Reps. Thomas Massie (R.-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) need 218 signatures to force a floor vote on a bill they introduced that demands the release of the documents.
Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel has been busy deflecting questions about the Epstein files. During a recent congressional hearing, instead of answering questions about Epstein, Patel recited the ABCs.
The Secret Handshake has put up tongue-in-cheek monuments before, including a series of bronzed turds that honored the “brave men and women who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to loot, urinate and defecate throughout these hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”
Another statue of a giant gold thumb crushing the Statue of Liberty appeared on the National Mall in June with a plaque on one side that read, “Dictator Approved.”