First, it was Larry Summers. Now it's Kathryn Ruemmler. Who's next from the Obama White House – Hillary Clinton? Maybe, actually, if Barack Obama's former Secretary of State maanges to get a contempt of Congress charge over her refusal to appear after her subpoena from the House Oversight Committee.
Democrats took up the Epstein Files cause to start taking political scalps. They keep succeeding, but ... not how they planned:
Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at storied investment bank Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, announced her resignation Thursday, after emails between her and Jeffrey Epstein showed a close relationship where she described him as an “older brother” and downplayed his sex crimes.
Ruemmler said in a statement that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026.”
Up until her resignation, Ruemmler repeatedly tried to distance herself from the emails and other correspondence and had been defiant that she would not resign from Goldman’s top legal post, which she had held since 2020.
While Ruemmler has called Epstein a “monster” in recent statements, she had a much different relationship with Epstein before he was arrested a second time for sex crimes in 2019 and later killed himself in a Manhattan jail. Ruemmler called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey” in emails and said she adored him.
Ewwwww. The "Uncle Jeffrey" e-mails came shortly after Ruemmler left the White House, but long after he'd been convicted of sex offenses in Florida. It also came in response to Uncle Jeffrey acting more like a sugar daddy than an uncle:
During her time in private practice after leaving the White House in 2014, Ruemmler received several expensive gifts from Epstein, including luxury handbags and a fur coat, the files reveal.
The gifts were given after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender.
“So lovely and thoughtful! Thank you to Uncle Jeffrey!!!” she wrote to him in 2018.
Double ewwwww. If we didn't know what we do about "Uncle Jeffrey" and his sexual predilections, that would look very damning in more than one context. As it stands, it still smells as badly as a former Treasury Secretary calling Epstein his "wingman" in 2019 for helping him seduce a female protegé into getting "horizontal."
Ruemmler also kept corresponding with "Uncle Jeffrey" right up to the end on public relations, once the Miami Herald exposed the scummy deal cut by then-US Attorney Alex Acosta that gave Epstein the softest possible landing:
In the past several months, batches of documents released by Congress and the Justice Department added detail to the relationship, deepening concerns among some inside the bank about her position. Documents showed that Epstein had listed Ruemmler as a backup executor in a version of his will and called her the night he was arrested in 2019. They also detailed their extensive chatty emails and the luxury gifts he showered on her.
Some of the documents show that in 2019, just months before Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges, Ruemmler was advising Epstein on how to respond to public criticism that he got a “sweetheart” plea deal in 2008.
Up until the "Uncle Jeffrey" e-mails and the evidence of personal gifts came to light, Goldman Sachs had stood by Ruemmler, at least publicly. CEO David Solomon had refused to fire Ruemmler over her connection to Epstein earlier, expressing complete confidence in his general counsel. A GS spokesman even told the WSJ that the gifts were not that exceptional and that many people got gifts from Epstein. Ruemmler's haul was jaw-dropping, however, including a cash transfer of $53,750 to cover a private-jet charter she had taken. Ruemmler claims to have refused to accept that particular gift, but $10,000 in Bergdorf Goodman gift card and an Hermès bag look bad enough already. Solomon accepted her resignation overnight and put out the usual "grateful for her contributions" departing statement.
The WSJ takes a look at the scorecard for Dems so far:
Ruemmler adds to the growing list of Wall Street and other figures to be removed from high-ranking positions over Epstein ties in the years after his death.
Paul Weiss’s former chairman Brad Karp vacated his leadership role earlier this month after a small group of partners at the firm decided he needed to resign. Karp said he regretted his association with Epstein and never witnessed or participated in any misconduct.
Former JPMorgan Chase banker and former Barclays CEO Jes Staley, former Harvard President Larry Summers and Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black are among the men whose friendships with Epstein have led to their public retreats since his 2019 arrest. Staley, Summers and Black have said they were unaware of Epstein’s crimes and regretted their associations with him.
We'll likely see a few more of these delayed consequences for the people who stuck themselves to Epstein, and vice versa. Given what we know about Epstein and his social climbing, this was always far more likely to damage people operating in progressive-elite circles, since Epstein clearly aspired to belong within them. Democrats insisted on picking up the Epstein Light Grenade anyway, and now have little choice but to watch it repeatedly detonate.
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