By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
Artist Robin Bell decorated Washington buildings with, among other things, a projection of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in KKK garb.
An image of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a Ku Klux Klan hood and anti-Trump administration hashtags graced buildings in Washington, D.C., last week, courtesy of light projections by guerrilla artist Robin Bell.
Bell projected the images onto the Department of Justice and FBI buildings Thursday, the New York Daily News reports. The hashtags included #SessionsMustGo, #WeNeedToSeeTheMemo, #FireSessions, and #RefusalToRecuse. They referred to, among other things, a memo reportedly written by former FBI director James Comey saying Donald Trump asked him to drop the investigation into now-fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and Sessions's contacts with Russian government officials before the presidential election -- an election Russia is accused of interfering with.
Bell also projected Sessions's infamous quote about thinking the KKK "was OK until I found out they smoked pot," which came in 1986, when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama and was prosecuting a Klan member for the murder of a black man. He has said the comment was a joke and that he never made other racist statements that have been attributed to him.
Bell's other projections included images of Trump, surrounded by dollar bills, and Vice President Mike Pence. Earlier in the week, he had projected quotes onto Trump's Washington hotel reading "Pay Trump Bribes Here" and "Emoluments Welcome," both referring to allegations that foreign leaders are gaining access to the president by patronizing the hotel. "Emoluments" refers to the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars U.S. government officials from accepting gifts from other countries' leaders.
Hotel management forced Bell to remove those projections after just a few minutes, but the images were shared widely on social media, which to Bell meant he had accomplished something.
"That is one of the big things that I'm trying to do -- using our artwork to explain these stories that are tricky," he told The Washington Post."If someone can laugh and look at something, and then talk about it."
