Newly released records from the Jeffrey Epstein case are shining light on the kinds of personal favors the financier extended to well-connected acquaintances—down to a full-day luxury spa package in Manhattan that internal emails say he purchased for attorney Kathryn Ruemmler.
The email chain, dated October 2014, centers on a charge at The Peninsula Hotel in New York for an “Escape from the City Day Treatment.” According to the correspondence, the reservation was arranged as a gift for Ruemmler and billed to Epstein’s Black American Express card.
A forwarded message in the thread spelled out the plan for the Peninsula Spa, located on Fifth Avenue. The itinerary included a body scrub and wrap, a 90-minute holistic massage, a light bento-style meal, foot reflexology and a bio-lift facial. The package also provided access to the hotel’s steam room, sauna, pool, fitness center and sun terrace.
In the same exchange, an address tied to Epstein was copied, and the note advised that the expense would be listed as a spa charge while describing the booking as a gift for Ruemmler.
Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, later became chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs. She stepped down in February after newly surfaced Justice Department materials detailed earlier contacts with Epstein, including personal communications and legal guidance she gave him in 2018 as he confronted renewed press attention related to his criminal history.
The 2014 spa arrangement occurred years before Epstein faced federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. But by the time the gift was arranged, he had already entered a 2008 guilty plea in Florida state court to soliciting prostitution from a minor and served a widely criticized sentence that included a work-release component.
The Peninsula booking itself does not accuse anyone of wrongdoing. Still, the emails add another data point to the expanding map of Epstein’s relationships across finance, politics and the legal world—an archive that investigators and reporters have continued to comb through, where even routine-looking exchanges and high-end gifts are being reexamined for what they may reveal about his reach and influence.
