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Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump shared a variety of issues, especially chasing women by New York City excessive society of the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s. But this element caught my eye within the Epstein information. They additionally shared, in two totally different cities and occasions, the identify for his or her respective command facilities: the “Oval Office.”
One is the very actual seat of American presidential energy presently occupied by Trump. The different was the nickname for Epstein World’s operations hub—the research in his notorious Upper East Side townhouse, by which his each bidding was executed by longtime assistant Lesley Groff.
Like a variety of journalists, I’ve discovered myself scouring the Epstein information—3.5 million poorly organized pages cataloging cloying elites and the misdeeds of the deceased financier. The disclosures have already claimed a Rolodex of executives and politicians, and led to the primary arrest of a British Royal since Charles I in 1647. They’ve additionally grow to be a near-hourly drumbeat of scandal encircling the true Oval Office, the one with the president who is known as “more than a million times” occasions (in keeping with Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who’s seen extra of them than most.)
As I constructed timelines and pried open cash trails for a separate investigation I’m engaged on, this phrase saved reappearing: “Oval Office.” At first, I used to be surprised that Epstein was speaking about carpets in the true Oval with such familiarity. Then it clicked: Was this a nickname for one thing else? I used the AI device Claude to brush the trove for the time period and its variants, narrowing findings down to five,162 pages worthy of deeper evaluation. Plenty referenced the precise Oval Office. But combined in—plain as day—was Epstein’s personal pet identify for the beating coronary heart of his world operation.
Once I spotted this element, it was a key to unlock a newly intimate, and oftentimes banal, view of on a regular basis life on the gargantuan French neoclassical townhouse at 9 East 71st Street. Track the phrase by the paperwork and it begins to map the contours of Epstein’s affect community: the way it labored, what it procured, and which males got here by his “Oval.” Daily reviews, scheduling, and family administration all routed by the “Oval.” It’s the place Epstein saved his passport in an unmarked hanging folder and his credit card details, and as soon as stashed the key to the office of Martin Nowak, a professor whom Harvard sanctioned for his Epstein ties. (Nowak didn’t touch upon the association.) The Oval was additionally the place Epstein’s “girls” slung purses and prepped for trips to Little St. James, a.ok.a. Epstein Island, and the place the bold-faced names of Epstein’s circle lounged beneath standup comedian Bobby Slayton’s mounted guitar. (Slayton mentioned he gifted Epstein a guitar embellished to honor his birthplace, Coney Island, as thanks for the usage of an residence between gigs. “I’m only guilty of being friends with that idiot,” he advised me, calling Epstein “repulsive.”)
Much is already identified about what may very well be discovered inside Epstein’s mansion: the sculpture of a bride clinging to a rope above the grand stairway; the life-sized stuffed tiger on a rug in what Vanity Fair described in 2003 as “an enormous gallery spanning the width of the house”—Epstein’s opulent private workplace full of rococo collectibles. A sideboard displayed a primary version of Lolita and a framed {photograph} with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. But this exploration of the information positioned me deep contained in the Oval, the lesser-known however maybe most functionally vital of all of the mansion’s 40 rooms.
Epstein and his employees referred to this research variously because the “Oval Office,” the “Oval Room,” and merely “the Oval,” a lot in order that the identify seems to have been adopted in redesign proposals for the townhouse (“Oval Study Room”)—in keeping with a 2014 rendering included within the trove as a part of a proposal by AC Atelier, a Chicago-based inside design agency. (When referred to as, the agency declined to touch upon confidential shopper work.) Was it, in actual fact, ovoid? Yes, an FBI warrant in July 2019 described it as so.
The nickname seems in among the earliest paperwork within the trove: a Skype name was arranged for Lord Peter Mandelson to take from the “Oval Office” in June 2009, when he was Britain’s First Secretary of State to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In September 2025, Mandelson was dismissed as Britain’s ambassador to the US. He is accused, amongst different issues, of sharing government secrets with Epstein, and was arrested on Monday by British police “on suspicion of misconduct in public office.”
But the Oval Office was additionally the guts of the humdrum house workplace wants. Take this request from one aide, acquainted to office-goers in all places: “Do you know if we have any toner anywhere for the printer in oval office?”
By 2010, the time period was fully routine: Epstein mentioned wallpaper choices “for the oval office” and pressed the employees in regards to the whereabouts of his new oval office lamp (“The tall, thin, clear acrylic thing??” an apparently freaked-out assistant requested Groff). In Epstein’s private digital deal with e book, his own contact entry included a devoted line labeled “Oval.” An Office Depot invoice—for a dozen Sharpies, a duster, and a field of bubble wrap, amongst different stationery—was shipped on to “OVAL OFFICE” on the mansion’s avenue deal with. In a separate e-mail, Epstein instructed staff that “phones need to be programmed to call oval office,” as a part of a punch record of house renovation duties that additionally included altering the carpet within the elevator.
“There is a package in the oval office on the coffee table marked for Ehud Barak.”
The Oval was the operations middle for Epstein’s large community of granting favors—and presents—to the wealthy and highly effective. An e-mail dated May 13, 2012, instructed family employees that “There is a package in the oval office on the coffee table marked for Ehud Barak,” the previous Israeli Prime Minister. Someone was to “put it in a shopping bag and label the bag for ‘Judith Tiomkin’ and drop the bag off at 880 Fifth Ave.” In different correspondence, Barak’s spouse, Nili Priel, organized to select it up from the middleman. (This mysterious Tiomkin couldn’t be reached for remark.)
In October 2016, employees have been dispatched by Groff to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to select up a Hermès-branded Apple Watch (2016 beginning retail value, $1,149) for Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s spouse. Emails notice that the watch was to be gift-wrapped with a watch band discovered within the Oval’s desk drawer and delivered to Previn for her birthday. Two years earlier, Groff advised Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s final identified girlfriend, to pick up “2 bags in the Oval Office both labeled for Soon Yi,” insisting they “need to go on the helicopter tomorrow!” In follow-up logistics, Groff outlined an East Side helipad departure to “Woody’s house,” noting that “Woody’s shoot is at Salve Regina College”—a Newport, Rhode Island, location Allen used for Irrational Man (2015), starring Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix. (I requested Previn if she’d obtained the watch however I didn’t hear again.)
I used to be stunned to study there was a regifting operation, too. To thank a photographer, employees have been instructed to strip any indication {that a} case of wine got here from a Rothschild family member and to create a new “from” card, this time from Epstein, utilizing Oval Office stationery.
As is the case for its namesake, safety for the Epstein model of the Oval Office was prime of thoughts. Instructions went out in January 2014 to lock the Oval Office door each night time, together with different heightened safety procedures. The household memo mentioned these measures have been meant to maintain out Steven Hoffenberg, Epstein’s former enterprise mentor and an imprisoned fraudster, who was discovered useless in Hoffenberg’s residence eight years later. “He is crazy and is NOT to be let into the house under any circumstance,” Groff wrote.
“It has been brought to my attention we need to be careful how we keep the Oval Office.”
It wouldn’t be an workplace of any form with no passive aggressive notice being despatched round about normal tidiness. “Hi girls,” wrote Groff in 2014. “It has been brought to my attention we need to be careful how we keep the Oval Office.” She goes on to instruct the recipients to “keep purses, computers, clothes, extra shoes, bags, etc off of the furniture in the Oval Office. We need to keep the sofa and chair available for guests to sit on…”
“Please pick up after yourselves when it comes to coffee cups, plates, etc,” the memo went on. “Take them to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher.”
“Jeffrey is also requesting to please keep the noise down in the kitchen… conversations, laughter, etc can get very loud and distracting…” she added.
The Oval was additionally a website for conferences with Epstein’s enterprise accomplice, the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who, like Epstein, took his personal life whereas awaiting trial for sex crimes in France in 2022. Four years after Epstein was launched after serving 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail in Florida for soliciting a minor, Brunel being within the Oval was handled by employees as an pressing notification. On September 27, 2013, a employees member emailed Epstein with the topic line “Jean Luc is in the house!! in oval office.” A contemporaneous email to a different staffer, Mark Tollison, bore the topic: “i told JE that Jean Luc is in the Oval Office!”
Calendars have been additionally suffering from references to the Oval Office. Epstein was scheduled to be the interviewer of a candidate for investor Leon Black’s household workplace in April 2014, and the girl’s résumé was ready for Epstein within the Oval. Black was scheduled for lunch with Epstein hours later. His spokesman, Whit Clay, advised me Black had no file or recollection of those occasions. “It’s well acknowledged that Epstein played a role in providing tax and estate planning to Mr. Black’s family office,” Clay mentioned. “He would also embellish his roles and responsibilities and be disruptive, and that, along with his requests for more and more money, is the reason why Mr. Black ultimately fired him.”
Epstein additionally used the “Oval” to dangle his skills to rearrange visas; Groff invited one individual to convey her “documents” so she might see “whether the work authorization would be possible.” The whole trove incorporates related references to Epstein’s circle arranging visas for younger ladies, together with fashions linked to Brunel’s Epstein-backed company, MC2.
During the 2019 FBI raid of the mansion, the Oval was an apparent goal—and brokers weren’t there for any gift-wrapping operation. They seized three Seagate exterior laborious drives from a compartment inside a bookshelf cupboard. Their broader haul included erotic sculptures, intercourse toys, a therapeutic massage desk, and greater than 1 million images and videos extracted from Epstein’s gadgets.
Was the “Oval Office” moniker simply an in-joke? Elsewhere within the Epstein Files, paperwork counsel the actual Oval Office was by no means removed from Epstein’s thoughts—or his attain. Epstein personally emailed Soon-Yi Previn providing excursions of the particular White House: “do you want the east wing state rooms or west wing.. oval office cabiet room situraion room?” (Spellings, his.) Earlier that yr, Epstein had leveraged his friendship with Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel underneath former President Barack Obama, to rearrange a DC journey. (Allen and Previn in the end visited the White House in December. Ruemmler had earlier deemed Epstein too “politically sensitive” for his personal tour, in keeping with emails cited by CBS.)
Previn replied to Epstein’s query playfully: “I guess we should see the Oval Office to make sure that it’s really oval.”
