A “Walk of Shame” art installation calling out powerful figures associated with Jeffrey Epstein has popped up on Austin’s Brazos Street — complete with QR codes that onlookers can scan to view the files linked to billionaire investors, elected officials and tech moguls who have been connected to Epstein through recently released files from the Department of Justice.
Beginning in January, the Department of Justice unveiled 3.5 million documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law requiring the release of all unclassified records related to the investigation and prosecution of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in a prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Austin’s walkway of stars appeared during SXSW in mid-March, the Austin-American Statesman reported, when an unidentified individual installed them between the hours of 2 and 4 a.m. on Brazos Street’s sidewalk area. “He was putting them down really fast, with a rolling thing,” Jeph Clark, a doorman at a Brazos Street business, told the publication. “Just one guy. Little victories, right?”
The art project, dubbed the “Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame,” featured 31 names in total — including President Donald Trump and multibillionaire tech mogul Elon Musk. “Trump’s star — I just scanned it — was six pages long,” Clark told the Statesman. By early Saturday evening, the report stated, Trump and Musk’s stars had been vandalized to obscure their names. Their corresponding QR codes, however, remained.
A similar art installation also appeared at Farragut Square in Washington, D.C., although the identity of the artist who installed the interactive exhibit is still unknown.
From music and entertainment to politics and government, the breadth of Epstein’s involvement in both the public and private sector is staggering. That influence extended deep into the nation’s most powerful and visible circles, and is certainly one that Texas did not escape. Aside from Musk, several prominent figures in Texas have been identified as having ties to Epstein, including former University of Texas professor Thomas Hubbard, former Baylor University president Ken Starr, former White House media relations director Merrie Spaeth, as well as Stanford-trained physician and former CBS News contributor Peter Attia.