Investigating claim Dr. Oz invited Epstein to Valentine’s Day party in 2016

In February, a rumor spread that former television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom U.S. President Donald Trump appointed to administer Medicare and Medicaid in his second administration, invited the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to a Valentine’s Day party in 2016, eight years after Epstein pleaded guilty to crimes including solicitation of prostitution with a minor and served a prison sentence in Florida. 

One Facebook post amplified an interview of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., by Jillian Michaels, a television personality and celebrity fitness trainer, in which Greene relayed the claim that Oz had invited Epstein to a party he was hosting:

(Facebook page Occupy Democrats)

The post read, in part:

Speaking on the Keeping it Real with Jillian Michaels podcast, MTG went off-script, admitting the Epstein horrors run deep across both parties. She highlighted Trump’s Medicare point man Dr. Mehmet Oz invited Epstein to a 2016 Valentine’s Day party YEARS after his Florida conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, then pivoted to the bigger picture.

Greene discussed such an email in an episode of Michaels’ podcast uploaded to YouTube on Feb. 15, 2026 (at the 1:21:46 mark):

Their exchange went as follows:

GREENE: I read this morning that Dr. Oz invited Epstein to some Valentine’s Day party he and his wife were having in 2016. 

MICHAELS: This is Dr. Oz is currently serving in the Trump administration over Medicare. 

GREENE: Exactly. But this is… and that was post that was after Epstein had been convicted… convicted of of pedophilia. So… it’s like, what… how did… how do these people…? And that’s the hardest part. These are people that we may love, people that we have cheered for, people that I know I supported. And it’s both sides of the aisle.

It was true that the Epstein files the Department of Justice released in early 2026 contained an invitation to a 2016 Valentine’s Day party, and it was also true that the invitation listed Oz and his wife, Lisa Oz, as the hosts. However, we have not independently confirmed that the invitation authentically came from Oz and his wife, and as a result we’ve refrained from rating the claim.

We have reached out to Oz seeking confirmation that he or his wife sent the invitation and will update this story if we learn more.

Documents in the Department of Justice’s so-called Epstein Library included an electronic invitation date Feb. 1, 2016, that reached Epstein in the form of an email with the file number EFTA01788803. The sender’s email address was redacted, but the name before the address was “Mehmet & Lisa Oz.” The subject line of the email read, “Mehmet & Lisa Oz’s Valentines Celebration.”

The body of the email included various links to Paperless Post, an online platform that lets its users design and send invitations. One link presumably allowed the recipient to view the card, and others appeared to lead to the location of the celebration and to add the celebration to the recipient’s calendar. Clicking on the links led to expired pages. Snopes could not determine when or where the celebration took place, nor whether Epstein attended it. 

For further reading, Snopes has covered many rumors related to the Epstein files, including the claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a “torture video” to Epstein.