Story highlights
A Brooklyn photographer carved a Mueller jack-o-lantern, placed it in front of Manafort's townhouse
A plaque titled "The House That Brought Down a President" was placed on the gate outside the house
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is being watched by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller in more ways than one.
A jack-o-lantern carved into Mueller’s likeness appeared outside Manafort’s New York City brownstone on Wednesday as a Halloween fright.
“I was originally was going to do some feminist pumpkin, but I thought that this was such a gift that Mueller was giving us a glimmer of hope,” artist Amy Finkel said, referencing to when Mueller filed an indictment against Manafort on Monday. “Mueller deserves that pumpkin.”
It wasn’t her original plan to place the pumpkin in front of the townhouse, she says. The idea came to her when she was watching MSNBC’s Chris Hayes discussing money laundering. She smelled the pumpkin rotting and thought, “Wait, I live (several) blocks away. I have to let this pumpkin rot at the brownstone.”
When she arrived, Finkel said a plaque was already there, which read “The House That Brought Down a President.”
“377 Union Street will forever be known as the building that lead (sic) to the collapse of the presidency of Donald J. Trump,” the plaque read.
Finkel thought it was fitting. “I’m a protester by nature,” she said.
She posted photographs of her display on all her social media accounts and they caught the attention of supporters, media organizations and trolls.
Pumpkin Mueller was no longer in front of the house watching over Manafort’s estate as of Thursday afternoon, according to Finkel. But that didn’t stop her pumpkin from going viral first.
Finkel, who says she’s a political junkie, comes from a family of artists. Every year they compete for who’ll have the best carved pumpkin. Given her pumpkin’s popularity this year, it’s safe to say she won.