U.S. Park Police said Wednesday they've removed statues from the National Mall that depicted President Donald Trump and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein holding hands and skipping.
The artwork, entitled "Best Friends Forever," was installed near the Capitol on Tuesday morning and quickly became a tourist attraction.
“In honor of friendship month, we celebrate the long-standing bond between President Donald J. Trump and his closest friend Jeffrey Epstein,” a plaque between the two statues read.
Other plaques under the figures made reference to the text of a racy 50th birthday note that was sent to Epstein using Trump's name in 2003. Trump has denied sending or being involved with such a card, and filed a $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal for reporting on its existence.
A note matching the Journal's description was turned over to the House Oversight Committee earlier this month, and the paper's publisher argued in a court filing this week the suit should be dismissed because the article is accurate.
A group calling itself "The Secret Handshake" claimed credit for the artwork in a statement to the Independent, and said it had a permit for the statues.
Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, said in a statement, “The statue was removed because it was not compliant with the permit issued.”
A spokesperson for the White House, Abigail Jackson, brushed off the artwork in a statement.
“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," her statement said.
"Democrats, the media, and the organization that’s 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,” she added.
The installation came a week after protesters in the United Kingdom projected pictures of Trump with Epstein onto Windsor Castle ahead of his visit there.
Trump was known to have been friendly with Epstein, and told New York magazine in 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.”
“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said then.
The pair then had a falling out at some point before Epstein, a multimillionaire money manager, was hit with public allegations of preying on young girls.
Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges involving soliciting a single underage girl in 2008, but at the time had been a suspect in multiple other cases.
He was hit with sex trafficking charges in 2019, and died by suicide while awaiting trial, sparking numerous conspiracy theories.
Trump and his allies promoted some of those theories and called for increased transparency in the Epstein case during the 2024 election, and Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel had pledged to make more information about Epstein public.
They reversed course in July, when they issued a joint, unsigned memo saying all the evidence had been reviewed, no other charges were expected in the case and no other information would be released.
Trump, meanwhile, told NBC News the birthday card was a "dead issue" after it was turned over to Congress, and has repeatedly urged his supporters to move on from the Epstein case, saying those who do not are “weaklings" and that he doesn't want their support. He has also started referring to the case as a Democratic “hoax,” despite the DOJ memo finding Epstein "harmed over one thousand victims."
The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the Justice Department to turn over its files on the case. To date, they've only turned over 33,000 of the estimated 100,000 they've compiled. Democrats on the committee said most of the documents that have been handed over were already public.
