Statues depicting President Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were spotted Tuesday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — the latest event in the controversy over the president’s relationship with the financier.
A plaque between the two statues reads, “In Honor of Friendship Month,” followed by, “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein.”
Plaques beneath the depictions of the president and Epstein also quote a message Trump reportedly wrote as a birthday president for the financier more than two decades ago, which Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released earlier this month, after the Epstein estate turned it over to the panel.
In recent months, the Trump administration has faced backlash over its handling of information related to Epstein from both sides of the aisle.
The Wall Street Journal this week requested that a judge dismiss Trump’s lawsuit against the outlet due to its Epstein reporting, referring to the suit as a threat to free speech.
“This case calls out for dismissal,” the Journal’s legal team wrote in a filing on Monday. “In an affront to the First Amendment, the President of the United States brought this lawsuit to silence a newspaper for publishing speech that was subsequently proven true by documents released by Congress to the American public.”
When reached for comment, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Hill in an email that “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.”
“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.
