As Trump converted the White House Rose Garden into a sculpture garden, the administration described the statues as being on loan from “generous private American patriots,” without naming them.
Reporting in August 2026 identified the lender as Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, chairman of Crow Holdings and the Republican megadonor known for his undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Three bronzes have been on loan since March 2026: Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and two Revolutionary War soldiers.
Crow's private collection is itself the reason the loan drew attention. It includes two paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, napkins bearing Nazi insignia, and a bust of Hermann Goring, alongside documents signed by Christopher Columbus and a garden of dictator statues he calls “The Garden of Evil.”
Crow's stated explanation, which belongs alongside the fact, is that he collects these objects because he hates communism and fascism and wants the evidence of what they did preserved rather than forgotten.
The issue is not what Crow keeps in Texas. It is that a sitting president accepted uncatalogued loans for the White House grounds from a private billionaire with business before the federal government, and the public was told only that they came from patriots.