When high-powered Democratic attorney Kathryn Ruemmler — now the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs — needed to vent about Donald Trump’s rise in politics, she turned to their mutual acquaintance, Jeffrey Epstein.
“Trump is living proof of the adage that it is better to be lucky than smart,” she told Epstein in an email in August 2015, while planning a visit to his Manhattan mansion.
Later, Ruemmler expressed alarm about Trump’s climb in the polls.
“The Trump success is seriously scary,” she wrote in February 2016.
The two chatted frequently about the 2016 presidential election and transition. (Ruemmler wasn’t a fan of Steve Mnuchin, who went on to become Trump’s treasury secretary.) They shared gripes well into Trump’s first term, as well as news articles on everything from Trump’s approach to Big Tech companies to the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Trump is truly stupid,” Ruemmler wrote in one 2017 email. “Trump is so gross,” she said a few months earlier.
The emails, released by the House Oversight Committee this week, were exchanged during Trump’s first term in office and before Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs five years ago.
Ruemmler has previously said she regrets her association with Epstein.
“The personal emails exclusively occurred before Kathy worked at Goldman Sachs, when Ms. Ruemmler was the global head of the White Collar Defense practice at Latham and Watkins,” Goldman Sachs spokesperson Tony Fratto told Business Insider Thursday. “As we’ve said before, and has been repeatedly reported, Ms. Ruemmler had a professional relationship with Mr. Epstein when she was at Latham & Watkins.”
The newly released emails suggest a deeper relationship between Ruemmler and Epstein than was previously known.
Ruemmler confided in Epstein when a rival law firm tried to poach her, when looking for a New York City apartment, and when she was being vetted for consideration as attorney general of the United States. She also turned to him for minor issues, like what it’s like to fly Emirates, the airline.
“When I go to Dubai on Emirates, do I need to go first or is business class good enough given that I only care about slepeping?” Ruemmler asked Epstein after telling him Apple had hired her for a patent lawsuit.
Epstein said “biz is ok,” but offered her a ride on a friend’s private jet. Ruemmler said she’d stick with the commercial airline.
A legal star feted by Epstein
The exchanges span from 2014, shortly after Ruemmler left her job as White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, until June 2019, a month before Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges. Nothing in the emails, which the House Oversight Committee obtained from Epstein’s estate, suggests Ruemmler had knowledge of the alleged conduct.
At the time, Ruemmler worked at the Big Law firm Latham & Watkins, which had previously said Epstein was never a client of the firm; it did not respond to requests for comment about the latest emails.
Ruemmler was widely viewed as a legal star in the Democratic Party. She was floated as a possible Supreme Court pick and had served as a lawyer in Bill Clinton’s White House.
Ruemmler moved to Goldman Sachs in 2020 and now serves as the investment bank’s chief legal officer and general counsel. She serves on Goldman Sachs’ Firmwide Reputational Risk Committee, according to the bank’s website.
Epstein — a financier with connections to titans of finance, science, and global politics — killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting an underage girl for sex.
It is unclear from the emails whether Epstein ever hired Ruemmler as a lawyer. At least three emails from Ruemmler to Epstein were redacted for what was described as “privilege.” A lawyer for the executors of Epstein’s estate, which provided the emails to the House Oversight Committee, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the redactions.
On several occasions, Epstein looped Ruemmler into email discussions with other prominent attorneys he had personally hired, including Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Martin Weinberg, and Darren Indyke.
Epstein and Ruemmler often emailed each other asking to speak on the phone. He included her in emails with other attorneys about responding to press inquiries about his relationship with Trump and Clinton. Epstein also forwarded to her a plan that the writer Michael Wolff presented to him in 2016 about countering the impending negative press from the James Patterson book “Filthy Rich,” which is about Epstein.
In a January 2019 draft of his will, Epstein named Ruemmler as the backup executor to his estate, according to a copy released by the House Oversight Committee earlier this year. The final edition of the will, completed while Epstein was incarcerated and shortly before his death, replaced her with Boris Nikolic, a former science advisor to Bill Gates. Epstein’s estate was ultimately co-executed by his first choice: Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn.
To be or not to be Attorney General
In October 2014, news publications reported that Ruemmler turned down an offer from then-President Barack Obama to serve as the head of the Justice Department, replacing Eric Holder.
Some of the most intense discussions between Epstein and Ruemmler took place in the weeks leading up to the public announcement that Holder would step down, as Ruemmler considered whether to take his job. Epstein compared the indecision to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Ruemmler said she had recently found a high-rent apartment in New York. And she was unsure she would secure enough votes to be confirmed in the US Senate.
“I signed the lease in my name for a year, so I think I am pretty stuck,” she told Epstein. “It is $11,000 a month and Latham reimburses me $8000 a month.”
Days before The White House’s public announcement about Holder stepping down, Ruemmler confided in Epstein that she wanted to lead the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.
“I think I should do it,” she wrote.
At another point in the discussion, Epstein advised Ruemmler to “talk to boss” about taking the job.
“Agreed, but I need to be prepared to say yes before I talk to him,” Ruemmler responded.
In the same conversation, Epstein offered to introduce her to powerful people in his network, including Leon Black, Woody Allen, Peter Thiel, Larry Summers, and Nikolic.
Earlier, in 2016, Ruemmler had sought other career advice from Epstein. She forwarded emails from a recruiter with Hogan Lovells, another big law firm, seeking to hire her.
Epstein suggested she push for more details about compensation.
“ask him for a financial proposal,” he wrote. “Subject to Mutually acceptable conditions.”
Some of the emails are cryptic. On one occasion, Epstein asked, “how did musk call go?”
“Well, I think, but not because of me,” Ruemmler responded. “The existential crisis thing is not a PMS or menopausal pose.”
In a July 2018 email, Ruemmler sent a context-free message to Epstein about Trump.
“Your boy should distance himself from Trump. Quick,” she wrote.
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