Updated Thursday, Oct. 1 at 8:00 a.m. PT: The the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room Reading Room and Bookmobile are headed to more cities this October.
- The next Reading Room will take place Oct. 8–11 in Columbus, Ohio, at The Sanctuary on Neil (618 Neil Ave.).
- Upcoming Bookmobile stops include Levittown, Pa. (Oct. 2); Allentown, Pa. (Oct. 3); Scranton, Pa. (Oct. 4); New York City (Oct. 5); Manchester, N.H. (Oct. 9); Lewiston and Portland, Maine (Oct. 10); and Princeton, N.J. (Oct. 12).
See the full itinerary and reserve a spot.
As Attorney General Todd Blanche addressed the Republican convention in Dallas, Virginia Giuffre’s family and fellow survivors gathered nearby to ask why the Justice Department is not investigating the evidence already in its possession.
PUBLISHED 9/11/2026
Attorney General Todd Blanche came to Dallas this week to deliver a “law and order” message at Trump’s midterm rally, where he praised the president and promised accountability for people who break the law. His central line was: “To evil men and women in this country, know this: President Trump will hold you accountable.”
A few miles away, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse and their family were asking why that commitment to accountability had not extended to them.
They gathered inside the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, surrounded by 3,437 bound volumes containing nearly 3.5 million pages released by the Justice Department. The books weigh about 17,000 pounds and stretch across hundreds of feet of shelving, turning a sprawling digital archive into something visitors can see, walk through and begin to comprehend.
Created by the Institute for Primary Facts and DEFIANCE.org, the Reading Room is temporary by design. After its four-day Dallas run, the exhibit is hitting at least eight more cities before the midterms, including Omaha, Des Moines, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, with more to be announced. The tour wraps up on Election Night in Palm Beach, Fla., down the street from Mar-a-Lago.
Meanwhile, a scaled-down Bookmobile (formerly a taco truck) will carry travel editions of the files and the powerful Trump-Epstein timeline printed on the outside, to more than 20 additional cities in battleground states.
The scale of the files is staggering, but survivors said releasing millions of pages is not the same as delivering justice. They are still waiting for the DOJ to release the remaining records, protect their identities and investigate viable leads involving alleged co-conspirators and enablers.
“Justice that stops when it reaches power is not justice,” survivor Sharlene Rochard said.
The thousands of bound volumes make that unfinished work impossible to ignore.
The full installation begins with a timeline, which may be the most powerful part of the room. It traces the allegations, investigations and documented relationships surrounding Epstein’s crimes. Entries are sourced, confirmed facts are distinguished from allegations, and documents are placed in context. The timeline does not ask visitors to take the organizers’ word for what happened. It gives them a sourced record they can evaluate for themselves.
Virginia Giuffre: Behind the Headlines Was a Sister, Mother and Friend
Then come the books, shelf after shelf of government documents filled with the names and stories of real people.
One of those people was Virginia Giuffre, whose allegations against Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and other powerful men made her one of the most recognizable survivors in the world. Her name appeared in countless headlines, court filings and television segments, but that public record can flatten a person into the worst things that happened to her.
To Sky Roberts, she was his sister. To Amanda Roberts, she was a sister-in-law who guided her through pregnancy and motherhood, and eventually helped Amanda disclose her own experience of abuse.
“The biggest thing that is always missing in the headlines is, of course, her fierceness, but her levity and her joy for life,” Amanda said. “She was very cheeky, and she was very much a prankster.”
Amanda called Virginia’s ability to find joy her “superpower.” Despite the horrors she had experienced, Virginia still saw the good in people and carried a sense of hope into her everyday relationships.
“She was a phenomenal mother. She really guided me through motherhood,” Amanda said. “I was pregnant when I first met Virginia. She was there for my birth. She was there for me in every single way.”
That relationship also helped Amanda begin to understand her own story. She said she was 32 years old and had recently become a mother when she first disclosed that she had experienced childhood sexual abuse and rape as a teenager. Virginia helped her understand that the shame was not hers to carry.
“She helped me through that process. She helped me heal,” Amanda said. “I think that connective tissue, where everyone can see a bit of themselves in her, is what made her extraordinary.”
Sky wanted people to know the same Virginia: a sister and mother who loved music, animals and teasing her brothers. He recalled visiting SeaWorld with Virginia when she lived in Titusville, Fla. As the family approached the penguin area, one of the birds came toward her. Virginia greeted it and, believing it wanted to be held, simply picked it up.
“She grabs the penguin and picks it up,” Sky recalled. When an employee intervened, Virginia apologized and explained she had not realized she was doing anything wrong.
“Maybe the penguin knew she was trustworthy or safe,” Amanda said.
Virginia’s life was not defined only by the powerful men and women she accused. She was funny. She was mischievous. She loved animals. She raised children, supported other survivors and created safety for people who had spent years carrying their experiences alone.
“She was a light and a joy to be around,” Sky said. “We truly lost a legend.”
Making the Record Physical
David Garrett, executive director of the Institute for Primary Facts, said making the files physical is the point. Millions of pages sitting on a government website are easy to ignore, especially when the public is expected to download, search and make sense of them on a phone or laptop. Thousands of numbered volumes filling an entire room are harder to look away from.
“It’s not just evidence of crimes that happened,” Garrett said. “It’s a crime scene.”
Garrett’s description captures the central question hanging over the installation: If these records contain viable leads, why are they being treated only as historical documents? Why are investigators not working through them right now?
Dallas resident Eron Lewis, 34, said seeing the documents in person produced a different kind of anger than reading about them online.
“It made me very angry seeing how many times somebody has said something and nobody’s done anything,” Lewis said.
Another visitor, Pierce D., said the physical installation restored something that the numbers could not. “Numbers can be so abstract,” he said; the room itself “shows humanity.”
Sky Roberts described the installation as an emotional journey that begins with questions and ends by asking visitors what they will do with what they have learned. First comes the timeline, followed by the long corridor of files, whose sheer physical weight makes the scope of the case difficult to dismiss. Visitors then enter a memorial area filled with candles representing survivors, before reaching a reflection wall and rotary phones they can use to call the Justice Department. The installation concludes with artwork by Maria Farmer, who first reported Epstein and Maxwell to the FBI in 1996.
A Space Increasingly Shaped by Survivors
The installation has changed as survivors and their families have become more involved, moving from a project about them to a space increasingly shaped and led by them.
Garrett said the organizers initially imagined the files as a resource for crowdsourced investigation, but they soon encountered one of the central problems with the DOJ’s files release: The government had sometimes redacted information about alleged perpetrators, while leaving survivors’ identifying information exposed.
The Reading Room organizers stopped allowing members of the general public to handle the books. Research access is now limited to survivors, journalists, elected officials and law enforcement during designated hours, while survivors have helped reshape how the material is organized and presented.
Amanda Roberts acknowledged many survivors were nervous when they first heard about the project, particularly because so many people and institutions have exploited their stories. But “the very first time that I walked in that room, I was like, ‘This is right,'” she said. “It’s being done in a way that is respectful, that is holding light and holding space for survivors.”
In New York, survivors visited the exhibit. In Washington, D.C., they began spending more time there and conducting research. By the time the Reading Room arrived in Dallas, Garrett said, survivors had become its hosts, leading tours and explaining the records through their own experiences.
At a press conference at the Reading Room on Thursday, Sept. 10, Rochard described being recruited into modeling as a teenager, when she was offered opportunity, travel and access to powerful people. No one explained how those same things could be used to groom, isolate and control her. “No one warned me that the very things that looked like opportunity—travel, access to powerful people—could also be used to exploit me.”
Trafficking depends on systems that make children vulnerable, dismiss warning signs and protect the people who benefit from their exploitation. “Trafficking is not random,” Rochard said. “It is structured, it is patterned, and it is preventable.”
Epstein survivor Annie Farmer has watched those systems fail across presidential administrations and political parties.
“It’s not about one complicit political party,” Farmer said. “At the heart of this case, there have always been—and continue to be—people in power protecting others with wealth and power.”
Farmer’s sister, Maria, reported Epstein, Maxwell and their alleged co-conspirators to the FBI in 1996, yet the bureau did not meaningfully follow up with the sisters for a decade. The government has had years to act, through five presidencies, while survivors are still waiting for answers.
“The cover-up continues,” Farmer said.
Todd Blanche’s Unanswered Questions
Attorney General Todd Blanche is now responsible for leading a Justice Department that has custody of the Epstein files, deciding how the law governing their release will be implemented and determining whether evidence within them warrants further investigation.
Blanche appeared at Trump’s midterm rally this week, a partisan convention to praise the president he once represented personally. Before becoming the nation’s top law enforcement official, he represented Trump in three of the four criminal cases against him.
Blanche also personally interviewed Maxwell in July 2025, questioning her for approximately nine hours over two days.
About a week later, Maxwell was transferred from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. The Bureau of Prisons did not publicly explain the reason for the transfer. Still, the sequence has fueled questions among survivors, as has the extraordinary decision to have the president’s former personal lawyer conduct the interview himself: Did Blanche participate in the decision to interview Maxwell? Was he involved in discussions about her transfer? What ethics guidance or recusal analysis did the Justice Department conduct? What information did Maxwell provide, and what investigative steps followed?
These are questions the country’s top lawyer should answer.
The Justice Department has said it released over 3 million responsive pages and complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, while withholding some material because it was duplicative, privileged, unrelated or covered by statutory exceptions.
But the department’s handling of the release exposed survivors all over again. Thousands of files had to be withdrawn after the government discovered that names, email addresses, home addresses, photographs and other identifying information had been improperly disclosed. Nearly 100 victims were affected, according to an Associated Press review.
Survivor Dani Bensky described finding her own personal information in the release while other, far less consequential details had been concealed: “My dog was redacted, but all my personal information was out there.”
She called that disclosure “a crime committed by Todd Blanche.” Her sentiment captures what many survivors feel about the DOJ’s bungled release: The government protected inconsequential details while failing to protect them.
Bensky said survivors have also identified volumes containing information that could be investigated now. They brought marked pages to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, walking lawmakers through Virginia Giuffre’s deposition and their own accounts of what the records reveal.
“You could literally walk up to any of these books, put your fingers on a page and be like, ‘This one. Pick this person,’” Bensky said, pointing at the long aisle of files at the Dallas Reading Room.
Yet survivors said they are not aware of any new investigations opened because of that material.
“To still see not a single investigation be opened, a lot of us just keep asking, why?” Bensky said.
The DOJ should answer that question. What message does it send when the department exposes survivors’ identities but will not say whether it is investigating the people they accuse? What does “law and order” mean if it stops when alleged perpetrators and enablers are wealthy, well-connected or close to political power?
Carrying Virginia Giuffre’s Work Forward
Giuffre understood how difficult it is for survivors to escape abuse, rebuild their lives and feel safe enough to speak. Her family said she spent her final years asking a question that institutions too often ignore: What happens to survivors after they get out?
Amanda Roberts said Virginia Giuffre would want survivors to know, first and foremost, that their lives and futures still belong to them. “She would tell every single survivor out there that you are worthy and that you matter.”
She would also understand why someone might not disclose abuse for years or even decades. Amanda pointed to her own experience: She survived childhood sexual abuse and rape at 16, but did not disclose what happened until she was 32. “That is a realistic process,” she said. “You don’t even register what happens to you.”
Virginia’s story encompassed many forms of abuse, Amanda said, and that experience taught her how badly laws fail survivors who cannot come forward according to the legal system’s schedule.
Up to 70 percent of people abused as children do not disclose it until adulthood, and the average age of adult is between 40 and 50. Yet statutes of limitations can still bar criminal charges or civil claims long before a survivor is able to speak publicly (though the rules vary widely by state, by offense and by a victim’s age).
Her family and other advocates are now backing Virginia’s Law, proposed federal legislation that would eliminate time limits for certain civil claims brought by survivors of sex trafficking and sexual abuse.
Statutes of limitations remain one of the largest barriers to accountability, because many survivors need years before they are ready to name what happened, much less report it to authorities or pursue a court case. By the time they can speak, the legal system may tell them they waited too long.
“Our laws are built for abusers,” Sky Roberts said.
Survivors are also calling on the government to release the remaining records while protecting their identities, investigate potential co-conspirators and enablers, and impose consequences on officials who expose victims’ private information.
They are supporting the REDACT Act, which would give survivors stronger legal remedies when the Justice Department fails to protect them.
At the Sept. 10 press conference—alongside Texas state Rep. James Talarico and Annie Farmer, a licensed psychologist and Epstein survivor—Rochard said survivors are also calling for mandatory trafficking education, stronger safeguards in modeling and other industries that send young people away from home, and laws that recognize grooming and coercive control before they escalate into more visible forms of violence.
“We cannot just expose what happened,” Rochard said. “We have to change what made it possible.”
Now raising four children, Rochard said she refuses to accept a world that teaches them that wealth and connections can place some people beyond the reach of the law. “I refuse to accept a world that teaches them that money buys a different set of rules, that connections buy protection, or that protecting power matters more than protecting a child.”
The Reading Room is not only a record of what Epstein did, but of how many people and institutions failed to stop him, and how many questions remain unanswered after his death.
It is also a record of what survivors have accomplished. The files were not released because powerful people suddenly decided transparency was important. They were released after survivors, their families, journalists and advocates continued pushing, even when the government gave them every reason to believe that speaking out would change nothing.
Virginia Giuffre helped make that record possible, but her family does not want her story preserved only as evidence of what was done to her. They want people to remember the woman who told jokes, played pranks, picked up a penguin, cared deeply for her children, guided other mothers and made survivors feel safe enough to tell the truth.
They also want the public to carry her work forward. One part of that legacy is SOAR—Speak Out, Act, Reclaim—the survivor-support and advocacy nonprofit Virginia Giuffre founded and Sky and Amanda Roberts now run in her honor, to support people affected by sexual abuse, trafficking and domestic violence.
Amanda said the organization grew from a question Virginia believed too few people asked once a survivor escaped: “What happens to me now?” Since Virginia’s death, Sky and Amanda have joined SOAR’s board and helped relaunch its work, with a focus on survivor support and legal reform.
“The story’s not over,” Amanda said.
Now the Reading Room and Bookmobile are heading to new cities.
“Power may delay the truth,” Rochard said. “It may try to bury it. It may redact it. But it does not get to erase it.”
She left the people running the country with a final message: “Survivors have answered enough questions. It’s time for the people in power to start answering ours.”
