Goldman Sachs is standing by its top lawyer after newly released emails revealed she repeatedly trashed President Trump in exchanges with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and turned to him for career advice.
The Wall Street giant on Thursday defended general counsel Kathy Ruemmler following the release of her correspondence with Epstein by the House Oversight Committee.
The emails released Wednesday span 2014 to 2019.
Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs as its top lawyer in 2020 and is currently co-vice chair of Goldman’s Firmwide Reputational Risk Committee, among other roles.
Bankers inside Goldman previously complained to senior management about Ruemmler’s relationship with Epstein in light of her role on the reputational risk committee, which decides which clients the bank shouldn’t work with, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Goldman officials reportedly told the bankers the Epstein matter had nothing to do with her job at the firm and that she was upfront in disclosing her relationship with Epstein when she joined
“Kathy is an exceptional general counsel and we benefit from her judgment every day,” Goldman spokesman Tony Fratto said in a statement to CNBC this week.
Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel under former President Barack Obama, regularly vented to Epstein about Trump’s political rise.
“Trump is living proof of the adage that it is better to be lucky than smart,” she told Epstein in an August 2015 email.
Months later, she expressed alarm about Trump’s climb in the polls as the real estate magnate was vying for the Republican nomination.
“The Trump success is seriously scary,” Ruemmler wrote in February 2016.
“Trump is truly stupid,” she wrote in July 2017. Months earlier, she called Trump “so gross.”
Epstein’s reply: “Worse in real life and upclose.”
The emails show Ruemmler also consulted Epstein on major career decisions, including whether she should become US attorney general in 2014. She picked his brain for advice when rival law firms tried to recruit her and when hunting for a Manhattan apartment, too.
The correspondence was released by the House Oversight Committee, which obtained the emails from Epstein’s estate.
The messages came after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. He spent 13 months behind bars and became a registered sex offender.
Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan lockup while awaiting trial in August 2019 — weeks after federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking.
In October 2014, Ruemmler weighed whether she should succeed Eric Holder as head of the Justice Department.
Epstein urged her to “talk to boss” about the position. In the same exchange, he offered to connect her with influential figures including Leon Black, Woody Allen, Peter Thiel and Larry Summers.
Ruemmler ended up removing herself from consideration for the attorney general post and remained at the law firm Latham & Watkins, where she led its global white-collar defense group.
The recently released emails captured Epstein and Ruemmler discussing former President Bill Clinton, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — and even people Ruemmler apparently considered overweight.
Fratto said Thursday the emails “were private correspondence well before Kathy Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs.”
Epstein told Ruemmler in one of the emails that he ended his friendship with former President Bill Clinton because he thought he was a liar.
In a January 2016 messge, Epstein said he’d cut off contact with Clinton “when he swore, with whole hearted conviction to me, that he had done something, he had forgotten that he also swore the exact opposite to me only weeks before.”
A January 2019 draft of Epstein’s will named Ruemmler as the backup executor to his estate, according to a copy of the document released by the House Oversight Committee earlier this year.
In 2023, The Journal reported that Ruemmler met with Epstein “dozens” of times after leaving the White House and before starting her job at Goldman.
Epstein invited her on a 2015 Paris trip and a 2017 visit to his Caribbean island, The Journal reported.
Goldman has said Ruemmler’s ties to Epstein were professional and related to her work at Latham. But Latham has said Epstein wasn’t a client.
The Post has sought comment from Goldman, Latham and the White House.
Ruemmler didn’t respond to requests for comment.
