Kathryn Ruemmler, the former White House counsel/Biglaw partner/Goldman Sachs General Counsel, finally had her day in front of the House Oversight Committee this week, sitting for a closed-door, transcribed interview about her years-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And per her opening statement, obtained by multiple news outlets, it was Ruemmler doing what Ruemmler does best: managing the narrative.
“If I knew then what I know now about who Epstein really was, I never would have accepted an initial meeting with him. It was a mistake to deal with him, and I regret it,” she told the committee, according to her prepared remarks. “But many people assume that given everything we know now about Epstein, everyone who dealt with him before his 2019 indictment must have known everything then. In my case, that assumption is completely wrong.”
It’s the same defense she’s been running since jump, the one that survived the original email dump, survived the career-counseling revelations, survived the “joke” about trading one of Epstein’s “Russians” for better comp, survived her own resignation that wasn’t actually a resignation. Regret, but only in hindsight. She told the committee she “did not see any evidence of ongoing criminal conduct or misconduct of any kind by Epstein during the time I dealt with him,” and that she would have “immediately reported him to law enforcement” if she had.
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On the gifts — the Hermès bag, the Fendi coat, the $10,000 in Bergdorf gift cards — she stuck to the same line she’s given Goldman’s PR shop all along, “I didn’t ask for them, didn’t need them, and didn’t view them as particularly personal or consequential. I accepted them graciously, as I saw no reason not to. But the gifts weren’t important to me, and I declined to accept some of them.”
Notably absent from her opening remarks is any real accounting for the reputational shield she provided to a registered sex offender for the better part of a decade. She did say Epstein was “a masterful liar” who “used me and other respectable people to legitimize his standing.” Which… is one way to describe being useful to a predator for years while telling yourself it was strictly professional.
But it isn’t a reckoning. It skips past the operational question entirely: why a former federal prosecutor and White House counsel — someone whose entire career was built on reading people and spotting red flags for a living — kept taking his calls, his gifts, and his career advice for years while the hints were sitting in plain sight the whole time? That studied incuriosity wasn’t some victimless character flaw, and real women and girls paid the price for it.
Two legal scholars who’ve spent considerably more time than Ruemmler’s crisis-comms team thinking about how people like her operate aren’t having it. Professor Amos N. Guiora, of SJ Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah’s Bystander Initiative, and Elizabeth Maldonado, a 2027 J.D. candidate at the same institution, are working on a law review article specifically about Epstein’s enablers. They gave ATL this statement on Ruemmler’s testimony:
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To understand Jeffrey Epstein and the unimaginable harm he caused to so many over so many years requires recognizing the complicity of enablers and bystanders without whom he could not have acted. Epstein was the direct beneficiary of a well-developed and highly structured ecosystem of enabling among the elite. While there is no doubt regarding the benefits he accrued, to fully understand the workings of the ecosystem requires acknowledging the benefits to those integral to the ecosystem, the enablers and bystanders themselves.
Ms. Ruemmler’s testimony is classic “gaslighting,” intended to minimize her culpability while acknowledging some engagement. The seemingly deliberate “murkiness” of her role must not grant her a “pass” from the consequences of her relationship with Epstein. Those at the highest levels of influence who engaged with Epstein undoubtedly perceived this as professionally—if not personally—beneficial. To suggest otherwise is utterly disingenuous.
What must never be forgotten is the extraordinary harm to the vulnerable. For Ms. Ruemmler to paint herself as a victim is a non-starter and must be understood for exactly what it is: a shameless attempt to avoid consequences.
Every “I regret it,” every “I didn’t know,” every carefully worded “I did not see any evidence” is doing double duty — acknowledging juuuuust enough to seem candid while foreclosing the harder question of what she gained by staying close to him. When Ruemmler said, “I can see now that he used me and other respectable people to legitimize his standing,” she is casting herself as one more mark taken in by Epstein’s manipulations. That’s the cloak of victimhood Guiora and Maldonado are talking about, worn by someone who spent a decade collecting career advice, client referrals, and designer handbags from the man she now says used her. Committee Democrats were skeptical in real time. Rep. Robert Garcia, the panel’s ranking member, told reporters mid-interview that “it is difficult to see how she is being completely truthful in there with the answers that she is giving the committee.” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam put it more bluntly: when confronted with her own emails, he said, “all she could say was that she either showed poor judgment or that her jokes about his massages were in poor taste.”
Poor taste and poor judgment, that’s all that there is in Kathryn Ruemmler’s telling. So if you’re looking for actual accountability, not just for the (deceased) monster that Epstein was, but one that requires naming what the enablers got out of the ecosystem, welp, this week’s testimony wasn’t it.
Earlier: OK, We Need To Talk About What These Kathryn Ruemmler/Jeffrey Epstein Emails Really Mean
Jeffrey Epstein: Biglaw Career Counselor?
Top Goldman Attorney ‘Joked’ About Trading Russians For Money With Jeffrey Epstein
Kathryn Ruemmler To Give House Testimony After ‘Uncle Jeffrey’ Emails Spark Firestorm
How To Keep Your Job After An Epstein Scandal: The Goldman Sachs Case Study
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1