A bronze-colored statue depicting Donald Trump and Jeffery Epstein holding hands and kicking up their legs in apparent merriment has returned to the National Mall, a week after the National Park Service removed it.
When the statue, originally titled “Best Friends Forever,” was removed because it was not in compliance with a permit, it was broken into pieces, separating the pair in the process. On Thursday, it was restored, with the two men once again clasping hands in the shadow of the Capitol.
An anonymous group of artists called Secret Handshake has claimed responsibility for the statue. The group provided a statement on the reinstallation to Carol Flaisher, a location manager in Washington whom the group hired to manage the permitting process, Ms. Flaisher said.
“Just like a toppled Confederate general forced back onto a public square, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein statue has risen from the rubble to stand gloriously on the National Mall once again,” the group’s statement said.
President Trump has moved to restore Confederate symbols in the military and in public spaces.
The statue, the latest in a series of satirical installations by the group around Washington, was created to “celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein,” according to a plaque on the work.
The group renamed the statue to “Why Can’t We Be Friends?,” it said in the statement.
Photos from the Mall show that as dawn broke over the Capitol on Friday morning, joggers and dog walkers paused in front of the resurrected monument to take selfies with it and read its plaque.
The Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, did not respond directly to questions about the statue, instead offering Trump administration talking points about the government shutdown that began on Wednesday. The Parks Service said on its website that its services would be limited or unavailable while the shutdown persists.
Since the statue was removed last week, Ms. Flaisher applied for permits a few times, but the National Park Service denied her requests, she said. However, the agency told her that an application submitted for a First Amendment demonstration using a specific permit can become a de facto permit after 24 hours, so long as the application is time stamped but not denied.
She submitted another application earlier this week, which was stamped, she said. When no one responded directly to the permit by Thursday, the group reinstalled the statue.
“They did not want us to put it up, I guess,” she said. “But this is the third attempt and it’s up — and it’s still up.”
When asked for comment on the statue’s return, the White House sent a similar statement to the one it sent when the statue first appeared last week: “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.”
Mr. Trump has tried to downplay his connection to Mr. Epstein, whom he was friendly with for about 15 years. The relationship has come under increased scrutiny after Mr. Trump’s Justice Department withheld some files related to Mr. Epstein’s yearslong sex-trafficking ring from public disclosure. Attorney General Pam Bondi is said to have told Mr. Trump that his name appeared in some of the documents related to the investigations into Mr. Epstein, known as the Epstein files. Mr. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.
The revelations have enraged some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, and the administration continues to face calls to release the Epstein files.
Jonathan Wolfe is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news.
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