The Epstein Reading Room Lands in Dallas — 3,437 Volumes, 17,000 Pounds of Files, and a Political Edge

A traveling exhibition called the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room has set up in North Dallas, housed in a wedding-and-corporate-events venue off Midway Road near LBJ Freeway — about 12 miles from where President Trump was headlining a Republican event at American Airlines Center. The timing is pointed but, according to organizer David Garrett, not coincidental in the protest-art sense: the exhibition was planned well before the political gathering, and Trump supporters essentially came to the reading room's city, not the other way around.

The physical scale of the installation is the point. Nearly 3,500 bound volumes — each two inches thick — contain the partially redacted Epstein files, totaling 17,000 pounds of material. Visitors also encounter a museum-sized timeline of Trump and Epstein's documented relationship, original artwork by Maria Farmer (an artist and Epstein accuser), and a Reflection Wall covered in thousands of handwritten notes from previous visitors. More than 15,000 people had passed through by the time it reached Dallas, and 2,000 reservations were already booked before opening day.

Garrett, who co-founded the nonprofit Institute for Primary Facts, explained the geographic strategy plainly: after visiting lawmakers in New York and Washington, D.C., organizers concluded they needed to go over politicians' heads to their constituents. Dallas is the third stop precisely because the political conversation around Epstein and Trump is happening in Texas. The exhibition has plans to follow that conversation wherever it goes.

The files on display contain specific, named revelations. Dallas crisis consultant Merrie Spaeth, who had claimed she cut off contact with Epstein after his 2008 guilty plea, sent emails in January 2015 offering his team help and writing that she wanted him to know he had friends thinking of him. Terry Kafka, an Epstein childhood friend who told a reporter a year ago that they barely stayed in touch, sent Epstein a friendly check-in email in July 2009 while Epstein was in jail, and responded to news of his release date with, effectively, that it would be a good day. Both exchanges are now printed and bound among the thousands of pages on the shelves.

The emotional tenor inside the room was heavy. Flameless candles flickered in a quiet memorial space. Visitors left notes for survivors on a dedicated reflection wall. Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa toured the exhibition Wednesday, listening as survivor Sharlene Rochard described discovering her name and photos in the released documents and sitting in her car crying for an hour, re-traumatized. State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, the Democratic candidate for Texas comptroller, was also present — and noted that her opponent, Don Huffines, owns what was formerly Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, a property currently under investigation by the New Mexico Department of Justice (though the Huffines family, who purchased it four years after Epstein's death, is not connected to the investigation).