Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump shared a lot of things, especially chasing women through New York City high society of the 1990s and early 2000s. But this detail caught my eye in the Epstein files. They also shared, in two different cities and times, the name for their respective command centers: the “Oval Office.”

One is the very real seat of American presidential power currently occupied by Trump. The other was the nickname for Epstein World’s operations hub—the study in his infamous Upper East Side townhouse, through which his every bidding was executed by longtime assistant Lesley Groff.

Like a lot of journalists, I’ve found myself scouring the Epstein files—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 first arrest of a British Royal since Charles I in 1647. They’ve also become a near-hourly drumbeat of scandal encircling the real Oval Office, the one with the president who is named “more than a million times” times (according to Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who’s seen more of them than most.)

As I built timelines and pried open money trails for a separate investigation I’m working on, this phrase kept reappearing: “Oval Office.” At first, I was stunned that Epstein was talking about carpets in the real Oval with such familiarity. Then it clicked: Was this a nickname for something else? I used the AI tool Claude to sweep the trove for the term and its variants, narrowing findings down to 5,162 pages worthy of deeper analysis. Plenty referenced the actual Oval Office. But mixed in—plain as day—was Epstein’s own pet name for the beating heart of his global operation.

Once I realized this detail, it was a key to unlock a newly intimate, and oftentimes banal, view of everyday life at the gargantuan French neoclassical townhouse at 9 East 71st Street. Track the phrase through the documents and it begins to map the contours of Epstein’s influence network: how it worked, what it procured, and which men came through his “Oval.” Daily reports, scheduling, and household management all routed through the “Oval.” It’s where Epstein kept his passport in an unmarked hanging folder and his credit card details, and once stashed the key to the office of Martin Nowak, a professor whom Harvard sanctioned for his Epstein ties. (Nowak didn’t comment on the arrangement.) The Oval was also where Epstein’s “girls” slung purses and prepped for trips to Little St. James, a.k.a. Epstein Island, and where the bold-faced names of Epstein’s circle lounged underneath standup comic Bobby Slayton’s mounted guitar. (Slayton said he gifted Epstein a guitar decorated to honor his birthplace, Coney Island, as thanks for the use of an apartment between gigs. “I’m only guilty of being friends with that idiot,” he told me, calling Epstein “repulsive.”)

Much is already known about what could be found inside Epstein’s mansion: the sculpture of a bride clinging to a rope above the grand stairway; the life-sized stuffed tiger on........

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