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Kathy Ruemmler, the former top Goldman Sachs lawyer who resigned over her ties to Jeffrey Epstein, told Congress her emails with the dead sex offender were taken out of context and misconstrued.
Ruemmler’s comments on Wednesday in a prepared statement to the House oversight committee represent her most detailed public remarks to date about her relationship with Epstein. Her dealings with Epstein started in the months after she left her role as Barack Obama’s White House counsel to join Latham & Watkins and before she joined Goldman in 2020.
Thousands of emails released by the US Department of Justice earlier this year revealed the extent of Ruemmler’s relationship with Epstein, who she referred to in one email as “Uncle Jeffrey”.
“Many of my emails with Epstein have been taken out of context or do not mean what some have speculated or suggested,” Ruemmler wrote. “Given what I now know about him, I wish I had never dealt with him at all, much less emailed with him.”
Ruemmler described Epstein as “a masterful liar” who “used me and other respectable people to legitimise his standing”. She said she did not witness criminal conduct or misconduct of any kind by Epstein.
She said she was “shocked” by his 2019 sex trafficking indictment and that Epstein had “expressed remorse, embarrassment and regret” over a prior 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor.
Ruemmler, who was until last month general counsel at Goldman Sachs, is the latest ex-Wall Street executive to be grilled by the House oversight committee over their links to the late child-sex offender.
Ruemmler resigned from her positions at Goldman as chief legal officer and general counsel over her relationship with Epstein but remains at the investment bank as an adviser. She participated in a closed-door transcribed interview with lawmakers on the House committee on Wednesday morning.
The messages, sent between 2014 and 2019, showed Ruemmler had sought Epstein’s help to secure a senior position at Facebook and advised the late money manager on how to respond to press coverage of his crimes.
Other messages described lavish gifts the lawyer apparently received from the sex offender, including a Hermès bag, spa appointments and plane tickets.
The FT was the first to report earlier this year that Ruemmler would resign as the investment bank’s top lawyer in response to the revelations in the DoJ documents.
Ruemmler told the FT at the time she had “made the determination that the media attention . . . relating to [her] prior work as a defence attorney, was becoming a distraction”.
Goldman boss David Solomon told CNBC on Tuesday that the bank was “very grateful” for Ruemmler’s help in the search for her successor and that “once that person is seated, Kathy will move on and do other things”.
The Republican-led House oversight committee has spent more than a year investigating the federal government’s handling of the case against Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for federal sex crime charges.
The committee has interviewed notable former Epstein associates this year, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black.
Black’s interview last month turned contentious, however, and was cut short by lawmakers after they accused the billionaire of refusing to answer their questions.
Lawmakers served Black with subpoenas to appear for a videotaped deposition under oath on July 16 and to produce non-disclosure agreements that he reportedly signed with several women. Black could face criminal charges if the subpoenas are ignored.
Susan Estrich, an attorney for Black, at the time accused lawmakers of carrying out a “planned political stunt”, adding: “Mr Epstein had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not.”
But a spokesperson for the oversight committee said on Tuesday that Black’s attorneys had confirmed he would appear for a deposition on September 3. The spokesperson said Black’s attorneys would “produce the NDAs at the end of next week”.
A spokesperson for Black declined to comment.
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