New York: If the so-called Epstein files were the undercurrent of US politics in 2025, they have largely vanished from public commentary in the months since.
Released in dribs and drabs starting days before Christmas, their impact has arguably been greater across the pond in Britain than in Washington.
David Garrett is determined not to let the files – and US President Donald Trump’s place in them – fade from the collective consciousness.
In a quiet street in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood, he has opened the Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room: part library, part art installation, part museum. Inside, you will find all 3.5 million of the so-called Epstein files: downloaded, printed and bound into 3437 volumes.
Each volume is a hefty 800 pages. All told, the books weigh 17,000 pounds, or 7711 kilograms. “They say it’s 17,000 pounds of evidence of one of the most horrific crimes in American history,” Garrett says.
The Michigan-based organiser collated the exhibition with the Institute for Primary Facts, a Washington non-profit that aims to educate Americans about civics and democracy through pop-ups such as these.
“We wanted to be able to provide context,” he says while showing this masthead around on a sunny Tuesday morning. “When people think about 3.5 million files, it’s the law of big numbers – you don’t really know what that means until you come in and see it.
“It’s very hard to come in here and look at all of these books of evidence and think that the investigation is done. That only two people went to prison. That seems kind of incongruous and impossible to believe.”
The exhibit is a piece of activism. Like many Epstein survivors and their families, Garrett believes Trump’s Department of Justice redacted the files to the benefit of Epstein’s friends and potential co-conspirators, and to the detriment of victims.
The department denies this, and says any accidental publication of victims’ personal information was made in error. It also points out that by complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Trump administration made public far more information about the Epstein affair than its predecessor.
Garrett doesn’t buy that. “This law that was aimed at transparency … actually did the opposite and made them almost impossible to truly use for accountability purposes,” he says.
“What we hope to do with this room is generate some attention and some public pressure on the Department of Justice to release all of the files … and this time, properly redact it.”
Printing all the files was a mammoth technical task, Garrett says. Not only were the files scanned using various software platforms and formats, but the redactions proved difficult to reproduce.
“When you redact a file digitally, you use what’s called 300 per cent black. But 300 per cent black would tear the paper in the printer. So we had to go through every pixel on 3.5 million pages to prepare it for printing.”
On the rear wall of the gallery, visitors will find a large timeline of the Epstein saga, including the long history of the financier’s relationship with Trump. The two men were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s, and often socialised together in New York.
They fell out at some point in the mid-2000s, although the circumstances remain opaque. Trump says he banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “stealing” young female staffers, but some reporting suggests they initially fell out over a real estate dispute.
Garrett believes the US president has more questions to answer. “What you see here is that these two men, these two convicted felons, led remarkably similar lives,” he says. “One of them died in prison, and the other one is the president of the United States.”
Trump claims he has been vindicated by the files that have been released: that they contain no smoking gun against him, and have instead ensnared prominent Democrats, such as former president Bill Clinton, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman.
I ask Garrett why, in fairness, he doesn’t have pictures of those people on the wall, too.
“None of them are covering up this crime,” he says. “None of them control the Department of Justice. None of them have the ability to release all these files to the public.
“Jeffrey Epstein says Donald Trump was his best friend. They spent lots and lots of time together. He can talk about other people all he wants, but there is no one more similar to Jeffrey Epstein than Donald Trump.”
The New York exhibit is open for only two weeks, but Garrett says plans are afoot to tour other cities. Relatively speaking, few people will set foot inside the reading room, let alone leaf through the millions of pages within its walls.
But as far as garnering attention, it has been a success, attracting significant interest on traditional and social media platforms. The Epstein files may have receded from prominence, but their place in history is assured.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.