Kathryn Ruemmler, chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs and one of the highest paid lawyers in the US, resigned on Thursday night after the justice department released emails and other documents detailing her extensive relationship with infamous financier and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
For years, Ruemmler and the financial services firm had maintained that her contact with Epstein was strictly professional. However, emails, text messages and photographs released to the public last month presented a completely different picture, indicating that the lawyer had been closer to him even before she joined Goldman in 2020.
Goldman’s chief executive David M Solomon said in a statement that he had accepted her resignation, “and I respect her decision.”
Ruemmler had been general counsel since 2021 and also served as a partner and vice chair of the bank’s reputational risk committee. Earlier, she worked as White House counsel under Barack Obama and later as a white-collar defence lawyer at Latham & Watkins.
“My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs' interests first,” Ruemmler said.
Goldman had defended her in recent weeks, saying that her links with Epstein happened before she was hired and were appropriate. However, the Justice Department’s latest release, more than 10,000 documents mentioning her, showed a relationship that stretched over many years.
Ruemmler's ties to Epstein
The records showed Ruemmler acting as a counsellor, confidant and friend to Epstein. She advised him on how to answer difficult questions about his sex crimes, spoke about her own dating life, discussed ways to avoid negative media coverage and called him “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey”.
According to The Guardian, an email “So lovely and thoughtful! Thank you to Uncle Jeffrey!!!” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein in 2018.
In return, Epstein offered career guidance about her move to Goldman, introduced her to prominent businesspeople and gave her gifts including spa treatments, luxury goods and high-end travel. Furthermore, within the hundreds of messages examined by CNN about Epstein’s legal troubles and damage to his reputation, there were also more intimate notes between the pair, including talk of a potential trip to his island and references to presents he had given her.
Emails detail advice, personal exchanges and years-long ties
From 2014, Kathryn began what she described in one email as a “friendship”. She explained Epstein how the law distinguishes between underage victims of sex crimes and adult prostitutes. “I think the point is that if she was underage, she could not legally consent to engaging in prostitution,” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein in 2015.
She also advised the disgraced financer on how to challenge the credibility of an accuser, saying in one message that his lawyer could push the woman into a “perjury trap.”
Back in 2015, on Epstein’s 62nd birthday, Ruemmler sent him an email, writing, “I hope you enjoy the day with your one true love. :-)”. Some emails ended with “xoxo”, and the two exchanged photographs. In other conversations, she joked about the weight of visitors at New Jersey rest stops and speculated about the sexual orientation of a well-known hedge fund billionaire, according to the New York Times.
Ruemmler, over a series of meetings, also asked for Epstein’s views on personal and professional issues, including her dating concerns. “men aren't interested in women my age,” one email said.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and Ruemmler have maintained that Epstein was never her client. Yet in 2018, when she helped him edit a legal document defending his 2008 plea deal for soliciting prostitution from a minor, the emails between them carried the subject line, “Attorney Client.”