A 12-foot statue depicting President Trump holding hands with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning and was removed by the National Park Service less than 24 hours later.
The saga, which made the rounds on late-night TV this week, did not stop there.
On Thursday, the group responsible for creating the statue — an anonymous collective of “satirical activists” called the Secret Handshake — said the National Park Service denied a second permit to reinstall the controversial statue, which featured a plaque reading, “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein.”
“The statue was removed because it was not compliant with the permit issued,” Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace told CNN, citing a height discrepancy.
The statue, spray-painted bronze and titled “Best Friends Forever,” was removed on Wednesday at 5:30 a.m., said Carol Flaisher, a D.C.-based location manager who had been contracted by Secret Handshake to obtain the appropriate permit for the statue.
It’s a job Flaisher says she’s been doing for film and television throughout her 40-year career, and she has never seen a permitted display on the National Mall removed, she says. If there are issues with the permit, the NPS is required to give the applicant 24-hour notice to fix the error before taking action. That notice was not given, Flaisher says.
“We’ve been doing this for so long. I’ve never had one rejected, ever, ever, ever,” said Flaisher. “I’ve never been thrown off of the property. I’ve never heard of such a thing. And they did it at 5:30 in the morning. … I wonder why they did that.”
On Wednesday around noon, Flaisher says she put in an application for a second permit — this time for a “demonstration” one. That type of permit usually has a 24-hour turnaround, and Flaisher says an employee at NPS told her she would have the new permit in about that time frame.
While Flaisher was trying to obtain a second permit, members of Secret Handshake were working to retrieve their art.
The statue was not treated kindly upon its removal, said the rep from Secret Handshake, who requested not to be named in keeping with the anonymous nature of the group’s activism. The statue was in several pieces, with heads and knees broken in half. They then spent several hours repairing, rebuilding and “gluing it together” the rep said. “It looks pretty cool, to be honest. It got kind of messed up, but in an interesting way.”
The Times reviewed a video taken by the group’s security that shows workers toppling the statue in the dark and removing it.
“Free speech. There goes Trump, there goes Epstein,” a passerby can be heard saying. “Taxpayers’ dollars.”
Throughout Thursday, the Secret Handshake rep said, “we were told [of the permit], it’s approved, it’s approved, it’s approved.”
Flaisher called a little after noon and was told that the permit had not been issued, but the person she spoke with did not know why. An hour later she tried again and this time she was told, “‘No, you will not be issued a permit,’” she says. She pushed back and asked who she could talk to, but nobody would speak with her she says.
“Absolute silence. No one’s called me back with anything. No answer. You don’t have a permit. There is no reason,” said Flaisher. “It must have come from a very high place because nobody’s talking.”
The NPS has not yet responded to a request for comment about why a second permit was denied or why Secret Handshake was not given 24-hour notice before the statue was initially removed.
The rep for Secret Handshake, which has been responsible for four other political satirical statues on the National Mall, including “Poop Desk,” a bronze art installation featuring a pile of feces on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk, says the group is currently considering what to do next with its repaired “Best Friends” statue.
The rep said the group hires security to protect its work at the mall, as mandated by the permit, and that their security was in place Thursday afternoon, getting ready for the statue to be installed for the second time.
“They took video … and the amount of unmarked cars, Park Service cars, city police and giant trucks ready to haul it away if we decided to place it down anyway. … Wow. They were ready,” the rep said. “There were at least 10 vehicles, I would say.”
The question of whether the statue will be allowed to be replaced comes in the midst of a fierce debate about free speech in America that was kicked off by ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the comedian weighed in on the killing of Charlie Kirk.
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