Touring Epstein files exhibition has drawn roughly 12,500 to 13,000 notes, organizer says
Visitors to The Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room and its traveling bookmobile left approximately 12,500 to 13,000 notes in total, according to David Garrett, founder of the Institute for Primary Facts, the event organizer behind the show. The reading room made stops in New York City; Washington DC; Des Moines, Iowa; Columbus, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Dallas, Texas; and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while the bookmobile made about two dozen stops. Garrett’s estimate covers both the seven reading-room stops and the bookmobile tour.
Epstein survivor Danielle Bensky said the notes have given her hope amid years of institutional failures. Epstein survivor Liz Stein said support in person and in notes has provided encouragement to keep pushing for justice despite institutional roadblocks.
The traveling exhibition of Epstein investigative files was first held in a New York City gallery in May. Bensky did not know what to expect when she first went and wondered, “What happens if I walk in and survivors’ names are just plastered everywhere?” She worried at first that the exhibition would become “a form of exploitation for survivors,” but said, “Instead, it was just so beautifully done.”
The reading room is intended to draw attention to Epstein’s crimes and to law enforcement’s decades-long failure to act. Epstein, a former financier who counted numerous high-profile men among his associates, was arrested in 2019 for the sexual abuse of teen girls and killed himself in jail. Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested and found guilty of luring teen girls into Epstein’s orbit, but documents show law enforcement officials were well aware of the crimes decades prior. Survivors have called for greater transparency and legal actions against any other participants in the abuse.
The notes began as a last-minute idea, Garrett said. He thought visitors might experience deep emotions from the exhibit and might feel the need for support. He decided to keep a corkboard standing in the exhibition’s final room when the show opened to the public, stocked with extra notecards and pens alongside information about the national suicide prevention hotline and resources for people experiencing gender-based violence.
Bensky, who was among the Epstein survivors pushing for accountability and justice, did not know what would happen when Garrett floated the idea of making the exhibit more interactive. She called it “such a great idea” and said, “That’ll be so cool to see.” Garrett said, “We just put them out and said, ‘if you want to write a note to the survivors, you can do that,’” and added, “We didn’t think that we would need more than that two foot by three foot corkboard.”
By the end of the first day, the corkboard was full and notes were taped up all around it — about 300 cards in all, Garrett said. For the next 10 days, the producer bought more cork boards every day, and there were 30 by the time the reading room ended its initial exhibition. “Every surface on that basement downstairs was full of cork boards and full of cards,” he said.
About a week after the reading room officially opened, Bensky returned and found “at least six or seven corkboards that were full and overflowing with notes”. There were notes with drawings and notes with abject sadness and, Bensky said, “sometimes, it was pure rage”. Some were addressed directly to survivors, and others to the people writing them; even members of survivors’ families left messages. “It was just a really beautiful display of our democracy,” she said.
For Bensky, the notes have supplied hope. “Being seen in this process has been pretty remarkable,” she said. Visitors wrote, “We’re here with you, we stand with you, and we believe you” — messages that carried, in her words, the “really beautiful empathy that comes with every single note”.
Bensky said, “There have been days where I felt like I couldn’t really do much. I felt really debilitated.” The reading room “can be a lot when you’re walking through your trauma all day, and you’re meeting all kinds of people,” she said. “But so many of us will just go and sit in the room with all the notes and read the notes, and it’s like, ‘Wow, what an extraordinary thing to actually be seen and be believed by so many people at this point.’”
Liz Stein, an Epstein survivor, expressed similar sentiments about the power of the notes. “It started out with one bulletin board, and I will never forget seeing that one initial bulletin board and just really feeling like, ‘Oh my goodness, people are really reacting to that,’” Stein said. When the first reading room installation ended, the notes “took up the better part of the downstairs of the exhibit”. “The love that people show us is overwhelming,” she said. At every event, visitors hug the survivors and tell them what they mean to them — and often add, “But it doesn’t matter. I’m just someone you don’t know from somewhere you don’t live.” Stein said she responds that “we might not know your individual names, but we feel the love”.
A photo caption in The Guardian’s report said Epstein survivors including Sharlene Rochard and Liz Stein attempted to hand a copy of the Epstein files to Texas senator John Cornyn in June.
Among the notes Stein counts as favorites: “Your courage is louder than the people who tried to silence you.” Another read, “One of these girls could have been me or my friends.” A third, she said, put it plainly: “Money and power should not dictate justice.” Bensky remembered one that was “just so simple”. “I think it literally just said: ‘It wasn’t your fault,’” she said.
The reading room kicked off several months before midterm elections that dealt Republicans numerous blows, losses that some commentators attributed to voters rejecting Trump. Trump and Maga Republicans have faced criticism of his administration’s handling of the files since he took office.
The White House rejected criticism of Trump’s handling of the files. “Just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said. “And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House oversight committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
The Justice Department also rebuffed criticism of its handling of the files and condemned the reading room. “This sham tour is traveling to politically competitive areas and shamefully using victims as political pawns,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. The statement called the tour a fundraising ploy: “The non-profit’s fundraising ploy, which often hosts candidates for office, is a disgrace. It’s thanks to this Department of Justice that they even have those files, released in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act under the most transparent administration to date.”
Stein said the words from supporters, both in person and in notes, have provided encouragement to keep pushing for justice in spite of institutional roadblocks. “This wall with the note cards is a really tangible visual representation of how much support we have,” she said, “and that fuels us in a way that I don’t think people quite understand.”