At the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room in Washington D.C. last week, several Epstein survivors were present to give U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) a personal tour of the temporary exhibition.

 At the ground-level space a few steps from Capitol One Arena, the design and layout of the facility presented what seemed like a heavy investment by the sponsor, the Institute for Primary Facts, a nonprofit, non-partisan group aimed at government transparency. An IPF founder, David Garrett insisted, “You can do a lot with IKEA.” 

 It may have been a reading room for the survivors, their families, law enforcement, the press and Congressional members, but the 3,437 volumes of approximately 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files were off-limits to the public. Garrett explained the restriction was in place because “many of the survivors’ names are not redacted,” contrary to what the U.S. Department of Justice said it would do when it released the files.

Each volume in the reading room was 800 pages and weighed about five pounds. Flipping through one volume for a few minutes (no pictures), the names of Woody Allen, Noam Chomsky, Larry Summers, a Woods Hole researcher, academics, several women, and banking and investment figures popped out before pornographic wording was seen.

 The exhibition was spread over two floors, handsomely designed with the volumes on the first floor, and a wall with a huge timeline of Trump and Epstein’s relationship, their alleged crimes, misdemeanors and assaults. To ensure accuracy, the IPF hired Glenn Kessler, the former “Pinocchio columnist” for The Washington Post, to fact-check the timeline. 

 Upstairs, hundreds of handwritten messages were posted on a wall, larger than the side of a tractor trailer truck. Across from the wall,1,400 artificial candles represented the victims. Not all the victims have come forth, with some wishing to remain anonymous. Between the candles and the message wall, visitors sat at tables to compose personal messages on pre-addressed and stamped birthday postcards for Trump. Soft music played.

 Congresswoman Jayapal took her time to view the presentation, walking slowly from section to section and listening to survivors. She asked them questions and spent several minutes studying the artwork made by Maria Farmer, the first publicly named survivor who contacted the FBI in 1996 about Epstein. From one volume, Rep. Jayapal later read aloud sections dealing with multiple groups of women. 

Liz Stein of Philadelphia and Marijke Chartouni of Seattle were two survivors present last week, unenthusiastic about telling their stories again and reliving the pain of their experiences. At the 2026 State of the Union address, Chartouni, a constituent, was Rep. Jayapal’s guest. 

 “It is hard to walk through the trauma all the time,” Stein said. “We were all young adults. Things like this happen because we don’t know what we’re looking at. It’s very subtle and intentional. It looks like friendships, like romantic relationships.” 

 Stein and Chartouni recoiled at the question of their ages at the times of their Epstein encounters. “What difference does age matter?” Chartouni asked.

 “I’ve told my stories since 2019,”  Chartouni said and directed questions to her website. 

 Many of the victims have become friends, Garrett said, and are “very successful” in their occupations, like Stein, who works as a human trafficking specialist. When she learned of it, Stein praised the Fairfax County Police Department’s human trafficking awareness programs. 

 The Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law last November and required the DOJ to release all unclassified Epstein files by Dec. 19, 2025.

 “We don’t know if Epstein deleted a lot [of files],” Garrett said in an interview at the exhibition. “We have all the files that DOJ released in January and a few more … If you ask Pramila or Robert Garcia, they will tell you they think there are millions of additional files.”

 Garcia (CA-D), also at the reading room that day, is the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigating the files. 

“I don’t know [but] it certainly seems as if the DOJ does not follow the law,” Garrett said. 

 Garrett explained that one purpose of the exhibition is to “drum up public support and put pressure on DOJ to follow the law.” 

 Garrett is the father of two daughters and said he “started to do some of the research [on the files] because I was curious, but I don’t have the stomach for it,” he said three times. 

“It was painful before but now that I know a lot of the survivors, it is so sad, it’s heartbreaking,” Garrett said. “They’re [the victims] are all incredibly successful, bright. That’s who Epstein was looking for, to show off. It’s amazing what they’ve done with their careers. I couldn’t ask for better role models for my daughters.”  

 Garrett said the timeline is very popular and viewers “can look at it and draw their own conclusions about whether Donald Trump participated in these crimes.”

 “I don’t know. I wasn’t there,” Garrett said. “What you do know is that Donald Trump is, at the very least, a part of the investigation. He was a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein for decades. His family knows Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. He’s deeply involved in this case and he’s also in charge of the investigation and influencing it.”

Garrett continued, “That’s the epitome of corruption, right? Using the power of the federal government to protect yourself and your friends. To have the federal government which is supposed to be protecting us, and protecting our children, to have them stand in the way of an investigation because they want to protect their friends [is something] that we need to fix and the only way to do it in a democracy is through us.”

 The display was up for only six days in DC before it closed Sunday. Advance registration was required to visit and security was tight. The exhibition is going on the road, probably to Texas and Ohio next, and looking for donations. Its first stop in New York City attracted 10,000 visitors last month. Five thousand visitors came to D.C.’s display.