The National Park Service has removed a statue depicting US President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein as 'friends'.

The 12ft sculpture, titled Best Friends Forever, which showed the president holding hands with the convicted sex offender, was taken down from the National Mall just a day after it was installed in the US capital.

Footage shows park staff loading the statues onto the back of a pickup truck.

The figures were posed with one foot kicked back and an arm raised, with a plaque between them reading: 'In Honour of Friendship Month.'

Another inscription below read: 'We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,' Jeffrey Epstein.'

Patrick, an organiser from the art collective The Secret Handshake, which placed the statue, said: 'We felt that Trump had quite a few friends throughout his life. One of his friends was Jeffrey Epstein, so we wanted to celebrate that with a statue of what that friendship might feel like.'

The statue was dismantled at around 5:30 am local time on Wednesday, September 24.

The Department of the Interior, which oversees the NPS, confirmed it had been removed for violating its permit.

A spokesman for The Secret Handshake said: 'The statue doesn't matter. What it represents, and it being broken down, is what matters.'

Local media reported that the group has previously placed other satirical works on the National Mall, including The Resolute Desk and The Donald J. Trump Enduring Flame, both of which gained attention for their controversial political messages.

Patrick and Carol Flaisher, who filed permits for the installations, said that their applications had always been approved without issue.

Patrick alleged that this removal was carried out without notice.

He said: 'We submitted everything correctly, but there was a discrepancy about the height that ended up on the permit. Regardless, their permit clearly states that if they choose to revoke a permit, they are to provide 24 hours written notice. Instead, they showed up unannounced in the middle of the night, broke it, and hauled it away.'

A White House spokesman dismissed the stunt, saying liberals were free to 'waste their money however they wished'.

Donald Trump was known to have socialised with Jeffrey Epstein in elite circles during the 1980s and 1990s, though he later distanced himself from the disgraced financier after his conviction for sex offences.

Epstein faced multiple charges of sexually exploiting and trafficking underage girls, including a 2008 conviction and a 2019 federal indictment, before his death in prison.