As President Donald Trump readies a UFC cage on the White House lawn and a “Great State Fair” to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary and his own 80th birthday, a new exhibition across town threatens to steal his thunder.
Coinciding with Washington’s semiquincentennial festivities is the opening of the Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, which gives visitors the chance to step inside and read the Epstein Files for themselves in hard copy.
Masterminded by curator David Garrett and the Institute for Primary Facts, the two-floor show at 737 7th St. NW houses more than three million pages of the files released by the Department of Justice in December and January in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress near-unanimously last year. The room has also been in New York City.
Epstein, the billionaire financier and pedophile, died in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 but his legacy has cast a long shadow over Trump’s second term ever since his DOJ and FBI attempted to draw a line under the case with the publication of a joint memo saying the sex trafficker left behind no “client list” and that there is no evidence he was murdered.
The strategy succeeded only in creating an even greater demand for his surviving accomplices to be brought to justice, particularly among Trump’s conservative base, long fed on conspiracy theories.
The president has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein but he has faced persistent questions about their past friendship, which Trump said came to an end with a falling out in 2004 when he accused the other man of poaching staff from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The exhibition begins with a timeline of what is known about the president and late financier’s interactions, citing documentary evidence, and also presents artwork by Maria Farmer, one of the women who accused Epstein of sexually abusing her, as well as a display of 1,400 candles to honor Epstein’s victims.
But it is the files themselves that serve as the reading room’s centerpiece.
The organizers have printed off all of the partially-redacted documents concerning Epstein and his powerful social circle released by the DOJ and had them bound into 800-page books, stretching to more than 3,400 volumes, that can be taken down from its library shelves and read at will.
The exhibition first opened its doors in New York on May 8 and now arrives in the capital, attracting 500 people on its opening night Tuesday.
Garrett told The Washington Post that five venues in the Big Apple and another dozen in D.C. had refused to stage the controversial roadshow but that he now hopes to take it on to five or six more states before the year is out.
He explained that the exhibition is not intended as “protest art” but a means of drowning out the online noise and giving people a chance to reflect on the seriousness of Epstein’s crimes and the ordeal his victims suffered and continue to suffer as they press on with their courageous fight for justice and accountability.
“The stated strategy of the people that seem to be trying to bring down our democracy is to flood the zone,” Garrett said. “This stops the scroll.”
Morgan Nance, a visitor interviewed by the Post, said she felt attending was a means of expressing support for the survivors.
“I want people to believe the victims, and I want justice to be served,” she said.
Another visitor, Alexandra Richardson, wrote a postcard expressing her feelings about the Epstein affair, which she affixed to a wall alongside thousands of others. “We are not angry enough,” hers read.
While the scandal reached a crescendo with the publication of the files last winter, it has largely dropped from the headlines since the outbreak of Trump’s war with Iran.
That changed this week when The New York Times published a bombshell report on the discussions that reportedly took place in the White House Situation Room last year on how to contain the political crisis the Epstein situation sparked, describing panicked officials and explosive arguments.
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee continues to investigate the case, meeting with key figures behind closed doors in the hope of uncovering the truth about Epstein’s sinister influence network.
