Kathryn Ruemmler, a top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former Obama-era White House counsel, was one of the first people Jeffrey Epstein called after his 2019 arrest, according to handwritten notes released by the Justice Department.
Ruemmler, a criminal defense attorney at the time, was one of three people Epstein called after he was arrested at Teterboro Airport, notes from law enforcement at the time revealed.
While Epstein was inside an FBI vehicle, he was also quoted as saying, “Oh, this is bad,” and “This is really bad.”
The call between Ruemmler and Epstein at 7:15 p.m. on July 6 “was brief,” her spokesperson Jennifer Connelly told The Wall Street Journal. The lawyer, who said she never represented Epstein, took no further action after the call, according to Connelly.
Ruemmler is now chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs. She said she has only ever had a professional relationship with the disgraced financier “centered on her other clients,” the WSJ reports. The attorney said Epstein “also informally reached out to me for advice from time to time just as he did with numerous other prominent lawyers throughout the country,” and added that she regrets ever knowing him.
“These documents are consistent with what Ms. Ruemmler has repeatedly said: She knew Epstein when she was a criminal defense attorney and shared a client with him,” Connelly said in a statement to the WSJ. “She was friendly with him in that context. She had no knowledge of any ongoing criminal conduct on his part.”
The Independent has contacted Ruemmler’s representative for further comment.
In the documents shared by the Justice Department, which is in the process of releasing millions of files in relation to the sex offender’s case, Epstein bought several expensive gifts for Ruemmler over the years.
In 2016, Epstein bought her a $9,350 Hermes handbag and $10,000 of Bergdorf Goodman gift cards, the documents show. In January 2019, Epstein’s assistant wrote to Ruemmler to inform her that an Apple watch she wanted had been delivered. “Yes!!! I got it yesterday. Love it,” Ruemmler replied, according to emails.
The next day, on January 4, 2019, she said in another email to Epstein: “Am totally tricked out by Uncle Jeffrey today! Jeffrey boots, handbag, and watch!”
Emails also revealed that Epstein tried to enlist Ruemmler’s support to arrange a White House tour for Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, in 2015.
“Could you show soon yi the White House,” Epstein wrote in a May 2015 email to Ruemmler. “I assume woody would be too politically sensitive?”
“I am sure I could show both of them the White House,” Ruemmler responded, although she doubted whether Epstein, who in 2008 had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, would be allowed in.
“You are too politically sensitive, I think,” she added.
Ruemmler was referenced again by Epstein in emails with a third party in 2017, where they discussed using the attorney to advocate on his behalf to Melinda French Gates, the New York Post reported.
According to the emails, a third party who is not named in the documents told Epstein that Bill Gates “wants to talk to you but his wife won’t let him.”
Epstein then floated the idea of using Ruemmler to speak with Melinda Gates. “Bill met my friend Kathy [R]uemmler, Obama counsel for 5 yrs. She would love to sit with Melinda and give her the other side of [J]effrey,” Epstein wrote, and added: “she is an arch feminist who is my great defender.”
Connelly, Ruemmler’s spokesperson, told the outlet that the attorney “had no control over how Epstein characterized her or their interactions.”
“She was not his defender. She never advocated on his behalf with any third party — not Melinda Gates, not the press, not a court, not a government official,” Connelly added.
A source close to Melinda Gates told the newspaper that she has never met Ruemmler.
Melinda Gates spoke out this week about being mentioned in the latest batch of Epstein files and addressed claims about her ex-husband.
The 61-year-old, who shares three children with the billionaire, appeared on NPR’s Wild Card podcast and was quizzed by host Rachel Martin about the Epstein case after she was mentioned in documents released last week by the Department of Justice.
Melinda Gates said society was “having a reckoning” and that it “brings back memories of some very, very painful times” in her marriage to the Microsoft founder.
“But I have moved on from that. I purposely pushed it away and I moved on,” she said. “I’m in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life, so whatever questions remain there of what… I can’t even begin to know all of it. Those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband,” she continued. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”
The couple announced their divorce in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
