Washington DC—The Institute for Primary Facts began its weeklong opening of the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room on Monday, June 8. The display opened to the public on Tuesday, June 9, after an exclusive day for media coverage. The display will continue traveling to other cities and towns throughout the U.S. after this week, unless the DC display is extended.
Visitors queued to observe the display of 3437 volumes containing 3.5 million records but were not permitted to view or read the records because the Department of Justice (DoJ) had not fully redacted victim’s personal information and names. The embargoed documents were visible on the bookcase shelves but crowd control barriers kept viewers from accessing the volumes.
The documents that have been released so far are available on the DoJ website for those over 18. A DoJ website warning banner advises viewers that the content is disturbing, “Some of the library’s contents include descriptions of sexual assault. As such, please be advised that certain portions of this library may not be appropriate for all readers.”
The site also advises users they can contact the DoJ if they find personally identifiable information or the names of persons that should not be public and gives an email for removal requests. However, names of victims already released cannot be undone. Their electronic publication will remain somewhere on the internet indefinitely. It is this issue of a lack of due-diligence on the part of the DoJ, as well as the ongoing coverup, denials by top government officials of their involvement, the victimization of what is thought to be over 1000 youths, and the gaslighting of the victims of a decade’s long criminal conspiracy, that has led groups like the Institute for Primary Facts to get involved.
The display is part of a growing wave of advocacy and volunteer groups coming together to expose a vast criminal conspiracy linking many powerful and influential figures, changing a culture of victim blaming, and creating safe spaces for victims to reclaim their agency.
The DoJ was required to release redacted files within 30 days under Public Law 119-38 known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act (passed November 19, 2025) but the DoJ was late with the release. Many reports of investigation were completely blacked out. Names of some victims were released. More files are pending release according to the DoJ website, which reads, “This site will be updated if additional documents are identified for release.”
The DoJ has not released the entire trove of documents, which it admitted in January was thought to be 6 million more pages of documents, flight logs, police reports, and photographs. Then, in February of 2026, then Attorney General Pat Bondi said all the documents had been released.
A search of the DoJ database returned 5363 pages of entries with the name “Trump” appearing in multiple documents per dataset. A search of the name “Maxwell” returned 23,565 results with the name “G Maxwell” appearing in multiple documents per dataset. The names of many other well-known persons in government positions and of celebrities also appear in the released files. Ghislaine Maxwell is the only key person convicted and sentenced in the U.S. for having a role in this case. None of the other persons named in the files have been indicted or have been convicted of any crimes related to their association with Epstein or Maxwell.
Some of the files contain spreadsheets of financial transactions between Maxwell and Epstein showing transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of the financial details are partially redacted. Others contain photographs which have been previously published with victims’ faces blacked out.
The Library of Shattered Dreams
Visitors were given a brief introduction of the library and permitted to take photographs and video but advised to respect the privacy and anonymity of other visitors. The 3437 volumes took up most of the first floor of the two-storied display but were nowhere near the number of potential volumes there could have been. A curator at the library who did not give their name, said the volumes were embargoed because the Department of Justice failed to redact all the names of victims from all the records and the exhibit was specifically not intended to do further harm.
Along the first wall of the exhibit is a series of inset bookcase of black and white volumes roped off from access. Within the volumes, whole reports with the names of the alleged perpetrators in details of investigations were blackened out to protect them from scrutiny.
On the opposite wall of the first floor is a timeline of major incidents of a fraction of the events in the Epstein conspiracy. Major milestones are chronologically mapped on the wall. Laid out along some 40 feet of wall, viewers begin to grasp how sweeping in both scope and time this conspiracy was.
As one ascends the stairs to the second floor, leading to the second part of the display, the landing balcony displays six oil chalk pastel paintings by Maria Farmer.
Maria Farmer, a victim who has gone public, loaned her series of oil-based chalk paintings to the exhibit. She drew them to help her come to terms with the nightmare she endured at the hands of Epstein. The oil chalk paintings depict some of the known principles involved in the Epstein case,
Farmer is one of the earlier victims of Epstein and Maxwell and has filed a suit against the U.S. government for failing to act on her earlier complaint to the FBI of Epstein and Maxwell’s 1996 assault on her. She is believed to be the first one to expose to the FBI any of the lurid details of the Epstein and Maxwell scandal.
The pastel art includes six 3’x4’ scenes. Among them is one titled “The Star” depicting Virginia Guthrie rising through a yellow star into the night sky over “pedowood” (Hollywood). She features in a golden dress with the subtitle, “The Child/Movie-star Stolen.” She appears almost as a deity released from her struggle, self assured, with expressions neither smiling nor dejected, neither happy nor sad, and rising towards the heavens. Virginia Guthrie, took her own life in 2024.
Another of the pastels titled “La Lune,” (The Moon) shows Ghislaine Maxwell bound in handcuffs and encapsulated under the ocean in a one-windowed tube resembling a small submarine. A great white shark is speeding towards and about to prey on her. The shark’s side reads “Florida Prison.” Other images and items leave clues as to the involvement of Maxwell in the conspiracy.
Maxwell was convicted on June 28, 2022 for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually exploit and abuse young girls. She was sentenced to 240 months. However on August 1, 2025, just 3 years into her sentence, after being questioned in prison for two days by Todd Blanche (then working as an attorney at the DoJ), she was quietly moved by the Bureau of Prisons to Texas where she was given much less strict conditions of confinement.
Another pastel depicts Alan Dershowitz, as “Le Diable” (The Devil), standing on a perch, half lizard, half human, dressed in an attorney’s suit, bloodied hands, and tossing a young girl into the depths. An attorney, Dershowitz helped negotiate Epstein’s reduced sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution during his Florida State 2008 trial. Dershowitz also negotiated a controversial agreement with the DoJ, which suppressed federal charges against Epstein. The end agreement enabled a controversial plea deal in which he was sentenced to 18 months of jail-work release. He served just over 1 year, was released, and he continued his association with Ghislaine Maxwell. None of the victims were consulted before the plea deal was arranged and announced.
On the second floor library visitors were greeted by hundreds of candles lit in memory of the victims in the Epstein conspiracy. A semi-visible slide show was projected onto a ruffled curtain with images too opaque to identify.
Visitors were provided an opportunity to write their thoughts on 4”x6” vintage library cards. They pinned their comments to the far wall, a place where hundreds of cards were left by others who came before them. Some stood silently reading the cards while others stood contemplating the evidence beneath and before them.
One could see a sense of public anger and of rage in the cards on the second floor as visitors paused to write their thoughts about the Trump-Epstein Memorial Reading Room. Many cursed Epstein and Trump while raising up the spirit of the victims.
It was clear in that exhibit deeply struck those who visited it. Something—many things—had gone terribly wrong with the length and breath of injury perpetrated against so many youth. The visual imagery and the effects of the volumes of information about what may turn out to be the nation’s biggest criminal conspiracies, has cast light on the stunning lack of account held against those responsible, and helped expose its long coverup within a broken justice system.
The Institute for Primary Facts stressed the library display is designed to keep pressure on those involved in the crimes and the conspiracy to cover it up, and to bring justice for the victims, thought to number well over 1000. It being primarily for the victims.
The Institute for Primary Facts notes on its website that the main focus is for seeking justice for the victims, but it is itself a small part in a larger effort by many individuals and organizations. “We are just one piece of a much larger movement. Across the country, organizers and advocates are working every day to support survivors of sexual assault — and to change the laws, systems, and culture that let this violence continue,” it published on its website.
The 17,000 pounds of books will travel “From New York to Washington, DC and after DC, onto a truck for LA, Chicago, San Francisco, and beyond. Every city where the cover-up has friends,” according to the Institute For Primary Facts website.
Sources: Public Law 119-38, Epstein File Release Act 2025.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405
Institute For Primary Facts website: registration for DC Exhibit “The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room.”
