If Donald Trump hoped a state visit to the United Kingdom would provide an escape from the Epstein files controversy that’s plagued his administration for months, he was wrong.
Ahead of the president’s second state visit, protesters across the pond used the opportunity to project expansive photos and videos of the president with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein onto the exterior walls of Windsor Castle, where Trump and the first lady were being hosted by King Charles and Camilla.
Also projected on the world’s largest occupied castle was the salacious letter Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein on his 50th birthday, recently revealed by House Democrats who subpoenaed documents from Epstein’s estate. The White House has denied the authenticity of the letter. Trump has said he had a falling out with Epstein in or around 2004, and no evidence has linked Trump to Epstein’s crimes.
An old photo of the king’s brother Prince Andrew, who was friends with Epstein, was also briefly projected against one of the castle turrets. One of Epstein’s victims, the late Virginia Giuffre, sued Andrew in 2021, claiming she was forced to have sex with him, a claim he denied in a now-famous BBC Newsnight interview in which he said he was at a PizzaExpress in Woking with his daughter Princess Beatrice at the time of the alleged assault. The case was settled in 2022 with no admission of wrongdoing.
Led By Donkeys, a left-wing political activist group founded in response to Brexit, claimed responsibility for the stunt and said that four of its members had been arrested — a first for the group.
“We’ve done, I reckon, 25 or 30 projections since we’ve been going. Often the police come along and we have a chat to them, and they even have a laugh with us and occasionally tell us to not do it,” a spokesperson for the group told The Guardian. “But no one’s ever been arrested before, so it is ridiculous that four of our guys have been arrested for malicious communications.”
Other notable Led By Donkeys stunts include an incident in January at a Tesla factory in Berlin, in which a photo of Elon Musk making a gesture similar to a Nazi salute was projected with the German word “Heil” next to the company’s name.
