Goldman Sachs’ chief legal officer, Kathy Ruemmler, has announced her resignation after emails revealed she had a close relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whom she called “Uncle Jeffrey”. Ruemmler said she would step down as the bank’s general counsel at the end of June, citing media attention on her prior work as a defence attorney as becoming “a distraction”.
The emails, released in the latest tranche of Epstein files, showed Ruemmler had extensive communications with Epstein from 2014 to 2019, even after his 2008 guilty plea for procuring a minor. The correspondence included advising Epstein on how to respond to a media inquiry in 2019 and showed she received expensive gifts, such as luxury handbags and a fur coat. In a 2018 email, she wrote: “So lovely and thoughtful! Thank you to Uncle Jeffrey!!!”
Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under Barack Obama, initially insisted she would not resign. However, the bank’s code of conduct requires pre-approval for gifts from clients to avoid conflicts of interest. Epstein also telephoned Ruemmler when he was arrested in July 2019, according to law enforcement notes cited in the documents.
Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon accepted Ruemmler’s resignation, calling her “one of the most accomplished professionals in her field”. He added: “I reluctantly accepted her resignation, but I respect her decision.” Ruemmler had been at the bank since 2020 and was among its top executive officers.
