Happy Birthday, Trump! Your Gift: The Epstein Files, All Nicely Bound!

By Jessie Seigel / June 13, 2026

The Institute for Primary Facts is taking a copy of all the released Epstein files on the road

The Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room has come to the nation’s capital just in time for Trump's birthday tomorrow. The "reading room," in actuality an exhibition, opened in Washington, DC on Tuesday and will be in town through tomorrow, June 14.

With luck, this traveling exhibition, brought to us by the non-profit Institute for Primary Facts (Institute), will steal some attention from the cage fights scheduled to deface the White House lawn—Donald Trump’s birthday present to himself, paid for by you and me, the taxpayers.

The Institute’s exhibit is free and open to the public, though one must reserve a spot for a specific time and bring ID, etc.

I made my visit on Friday, and this is what I saw:

The Main Floor

Immediately after entry, a wall to the right sets out the timeline of the Trump-Epstein history, beginning with Ivana Trump’s rape allegation in 1989 and ending with Trump’s 2024 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election.

The wall setting out a time-line of allegations and court actions related to Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein

The beginning of the timeline.

Donald J Trump's 1994 comment on his baby daughter Tiffany's "attributes"

The end of the timeline but, sadly, not the end of the story

Bookcases lining the walls on the first floor contain 3437 bound volumes of Epstein files, 800 pages in each volume. There are 2.5 million more pages that the Department of Justice has not released.

Two of the five wall sections containing the Epstein volumes

On an empty shelf at the end of the exhibit of volumes released thus far. The Institute is providing room for the rest--if DOJ ever releases them

According to Straight Arrow News, David Garrett, a founder of the Institute, has said its goal is to open “immersive, traveling museum exhibits designed to provide accessible, fact-based explorations of the foundational elements of American democracy.” Garrett told Straight Arrow, that it’s hard “to have context, and it’s hard to understand the source, and you don’t know if it’s fake or it’s real, and it’s just sort of this blob of information that numbs you, right? This is the opposite of that.”

That said, only victims, their lawyers, law enforcement, members of Congress, and credentialed reporters are permitted to open and read the volumes. The general public is not permitted to do so because, Garrett told Straight Arrow, “We found the names of some survivors that have publicly asked to be redacted, and some Jane Does that are still not public.” He added, “The docs were riddled with them.”

That might prompt one to ask: what’s the point of a so-called reading room publicizing the files if the public cannot read them? However, the public does have access to the files on-line. The value of the exhibit is that physically seeing the entirety of the volumes makes the enormity of what they hold real in a way that can’t be shrugged aside in the way that browsing on social media might.

The Mezzanine

For me, the most powerful part of the exhibit was on the mezzanine between the first and second floors. There, the Institute has hung several paintings by the visual artist Maria Farmer.

In 1996, Ms. Farmer filed the first criminal complaint of sexual assault against Epstein with the FBI, for sexual abuse of her 16-year-old sister. It appears that the FBI did nothing with that information. Some years later, while doing an article on Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Vanity Fair interviewed Farmer and her sister but conveniently left their story out of the magazine's published article. Thus, the Farmers found themselves failed by both the government and the media.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Maria Farmer’s paintings express it all. Below are a few samples. (Note: There is a bit of unavoidable shadow on them, a victim of the available lighting and use of a cell phone. Mea Culpa.)

La Lune. The Lady Ghislaine

The Hermit. (Hiding from Epstein/Maxwell)

Needs no caption--or title

Maria Farmer has also done a series of pastel chalk portraits of the publicly known victims.

The second floor

On the second floor of the reading room, the Institute simply set out 1400 candles to signify 1400 victims--including 1200 known plus additional candles to signify those not yet identified.

A 1400 candle tribute to Epstein's victims

The Institute also included a high wall on which visitors could leave notes expressing their feelings and reactions.

The wall of visitor reactions and reflections

Some samples from the wall:

In addition to leaving notes, visitors have been given an opportunity to write a birthday message on Institute supplied post cards. The Institute plans to deliver the collection of these birthday cards to the White House, presumably tomorrow, the date of Trump's birth.

While Trump himself probably will not read the birthday cards, perhaps the number and sentiments expressed in them will be covered by the press—something that will counter Trump’s efforts to distract public attention from his Epstein scandal with his version of bread and circuses.

The Trump-Epstein memorial reading room previously was installed at a gallery in lower Manhattan. After its time here in DC, Garrett hopes to take it on to five or six more states this year.

For security reasons, the Institute does not announce in advance what venue they will travel to next. But keep an eye out. Your state and city might be next.