AUGUSTA, Maine — A crew removed the Maine State House portrait of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in the latest example of fallout for the legendary figure following new revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The Maine State Museum took the portrait down on Friday following a request roughly two weeks ago from Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, and House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, Suzanne Gresser, the Legislature’s top administrator, said.
It followed the federal government’s January release of files related to Epstein, who was charged with federal sex trafficking offenses in 2019 and died by suicide in prison later that year. Mitchell was among the powerful men who had a long relationship with Epstein, who once called the Mainer “the world’s greatest negotiator” in a magazine profile.
Since around that time, Mitchell has denied a woman’s allegations that Epstein sent her to have sex with him. The newly released files include several emails showing Epstein tried to arrange meetings with Mitchell until 2013 and included an FBI record of a young woman making what appeared to be new allegations about sexual encounters with the former Maine senator.
Mitchell, now 92, has said he never had sex with underage girls and did not know about Epstein’s abuse until a state-level conviction in 2008. Through a spokesperson, he said earlier this month that he “declined or deflected” social invitations from Epstein after that.
“Senator Mitchell profoundly regrets ever having known Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women,” the spokesperson said at the time.
His portrait went up in the Hall of Flags, a second-floor area outside the governor’s office, in 2014. It hung in a prime area alongside those of Sens. Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund S. Muskie as well as William King, Maine’s first governor and the key figure in the statehood battle.
“For me, this really is dancing with the stars,” Mitchell said then, according to The Portland Press Herald.
Mitchell served Maine in the Senate from 1980 to 1995. He is perhaps best known for his work on peace in Northern Ireland and his report on steroid use in Major League Baseball. The Waterville native is one of the most powerful political figures in state history.
His portrait will be replaced temporarily with a portrait of Gail Laughlin, who lived from 1868 to 1952 and was the first Maine woman to practice law and one of the first to serve in the Legislature, serving in both the House and the Senate between 1929 and 1941. Lawmakers had already authorized her portrait as one that could be hung at the State House.
