Donald Trump’s hometown isn’t letting him forget his roots. Or his former friends.
Activists, politicians, and New Yorkers of all kinds are gathering in Manhattan’s tony Tribeca neighborhood for a 24-hour marathon live reading of the Epstein files.
Earlier this month, an art gallery was transformed into the “Donald J. Trump & Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” where every document the federal government has released related to Epstein—arguably the country’s most infamous pedophile—can be found. The free installation will close on May 20, but not without a theatrical farewell.
Dreamed up by Democratic political commentator Eliza Orlins and two nonprofit organizations—the Save America Movement and the Institute for Primary Facts—the goal is to read aloud “1,400 minutes of testimony for the 1,400 [Epstein] victims bound into nearly 4,000 books of evidence.”
“This is a refusal to look away,” a spokesperson for the collaboration wrote on the group’s website, where the event is being livestreamed. “Last week, survivors testified under oath at West Palm Beach City Hall, three miles from the mansion where many of the crimes occurred. The national press barely covered it.”
The exhibit also highlights the bond between Trump and Epstein, who allegedly described Trump as his “closest friend” for a decade.
A blown-up version of one of the now-infamous photos of Trump and Epstein is visible immediately upon entering the gallery, accompanied by a documented timeline of their camaraderie.
Just a few hours after the event kicked off on Monday, several notable speakers had already made appearances, including liberal podcaster Jennifer Welch, former Trump appointee Miles Taylor, and independent journalist Aaron Parnas.
The event will continue until Tuesday at noon and is being held about a 15-minute walk from the prison cell where Epstein took his own life in 2019. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the gallery.
That such a gallery debuted in the city that made Trump may be a blow to the president, who was born in Queens and spent seven decades of his life in the Big Apple—and almost just as long hyper-fixated on Manhattan.
“I believed, perhaps to an irrational degree, that Manhattan was always going to be the best place to live – the center of the world,” Trump—or his ghost writer— wrote in The Art of the Deal.
Later, the borough wasn’t exactly the best place to live—for Trump, at least. Manhattanites protested outside Trump Tower and stripped his name from buildings after he was elected in 2016.
Trump, 79, has insisted that he and Epstein were never close friends. He has asserted that he distanced himself from the late financier after he was placed on the sex offender registry in 2008, shortly after he pleaded guilty to a charge of solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
Still, his Department of Justice has been heavily criticized for its handling of the release of the Epstein files, with some 2.5 million documents remaining classified. The botched rollout has been described by many as a violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump reluctantly signed into law in November.
