Right next to Capital One Arena in Chinatown now sits the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, an exhibit that moved from New York to Washington this week.
The exhibit, which organizers extended to run through June 14, houses 3.5 million pages of documents released by the Department of Justice documenting Epstein’s years of sex crime operations. Those documents are housed in 3,437 bound volumes displayed on several bookshelves within the exhibit, which David Garrett with the Institute for Primary Facts, the group behind the exhibit, said is meant to demonstrate the scale of Epstein’s crimes in a physical form.
“I think it’s really hard to walk through here and see all this and think the investigation is done, I think there’s a lot more investigation to be had, a lot more accountability,” Garrett said.
Garrett said after the success of the exhibit in New York, where it opened in May, the group received a large amount of public feedback that they should come to DC, to potentially spur more action from lawmakers as well as the release of all the Epstein files by the DOJ. Garrett said they moved quickly to move the exhibit, and they wanted to be in the capital for President Trump’s birthday on Sunday, June 14.
“What we hope is that people will see this and demand accountability from our elected officials,” Garrett said.
The downstairs space of the exhibit displays the partially redacted documents. There’s also a wall with a massive timeline documenting Trump and Epstein’s relationship through the years, culminating in 2019 when Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew all about the girls.”
Trump has denied any involvement in Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls, saying he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago when he found out about Epstein’s conduct.
A staircase to the second floor of the exhibit directs visitors toward artwork by survivor Maria Farmer. The upstairs area contains a display of lit candles as a tribute to Epstein’s victims, and several tables with messages encouraging visitors to call the DOJ and ask for the release of the full Epstein files while still protecting the identity of victims.
The DOJ released a massive tranche of some 3 million documents related to the Epstein investigation in January, but the rollout quickly fell under scrutiny for not properly redacting the names of victims and not clearly outlining a list of all of Epstein’s clients who participated in his operations.
The upstairs also includes a wall for visitors to write messages of support for victims and otherwise express their emotions from the exhibit. Some messages read “You didn’t deserve what happened to you!” and “Turn the files into trials.”
The exhibit is hosting programming throughout the week, including an Epstein survivor Q&A with Congressional staffers, a talk with Amy Wallace—who collaborated with Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre on her memoir Nobody’s Girl—and a talk with US Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) and Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) about Todd Blanche, Trump’s nominee for attorney general who was heavily involved in the DOJ rollout of the files.
Garrett said it is easy for people to ignore the severity of Epstein’s crimes when seeing it online, and with the exhibit he seeks to give people a space to acknowledge the pain the victims endured.
“What we wanted to do here is stop the scroll,” he said. “When you come in here, you’re not looking for the next video, you can actually sit with it for a minute, and I think this particular case deserves that.”
Visitors can reserve free timed-entry tickets at https://trumpsonian.us/rr for the exhibit at 737 7th St., NW.
