Goldman Sachs General Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler Resigns Over Epstein Ties

Kathryn Ruemmler, a former top Obama administration lawyer, is out at Goldman Sachs after emails showed a friendship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spanning many years.

Goldman Sachs’s top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of emails and other material that revealed her extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier.

Ms. Ruemmler and representatives for Goldman said for years that she had a strictly professional relationship with Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender. But emails, text messages and photographs released late last month upended that narrative, leading to Ms. Ruemmler’s sudden resignation, which surprised many at the firm.

Before joining Goldman in 2020, Ms. Ruemmler was a counselor, confidante and friend to Mr. Epstein, the documents showed. She advised him on how to respond to tough questions about his sex crimes, discussed her dating life, advised him on how to avoid unflattering media scrutiny and addressed him as “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey.”

Mr. Epstein, in turn, provided career advice on her move to Goldman, introduced her to well-known businesspeople and showered her with gifts of spa treatments, high-end travel and Hermès luxury items. In total, Ms. Ruemmler was mentioned in more than 10,000 of the documents released by the Justice Department.

Ms. Ruemmler, in addition to being Goldman’s general counsel since 2021, was a partner and vice chair of its reputational risk committee. She earlier served as White House counsel under President Obama and was a white-collar defense lawyer at Latham & Watkins.

“My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs’s interests first,” Ms. Ruemmler, 54, said in a statement confirming the resignation.

Goldman’s chief executive, David Solomon, said on Friday that he was surprised and disappointed in Ms. Ruemmler’s decision to resign.

“Hindsight is a very, very funny and a very, very powerful thing,” Mr. Solomon said in a CNBC interview. “A lot of — all of — this happened before she was at Goldman Sachs, and 10 years ago.”

Mr. Solomon had been at a golf tournament in California when Ms. Ruemmler notified him of her plans to resign.

Until her resignation, Ms. Ruemmler had, through representatives, said she engaged in banter and social interactions with the well-connected Mr. Epstein in order to gain introductions to new clients.

The documents illustrated a closer relationship between the two that began in 2014 and was described by Ms. Ruemmler in one email as a “friendship.”

She educated him on how the law differentiates between underage victims of sex crimes and adult prostitutes. “I think the point is that if she was underage, she could not legally consent to engaging in prostitution,” Ms. Ruemmler wrote to Mr. Epstein in 2015.

She offered advice on how to knock down the credibility of one of his accusers, writing in one email that Mr. Epstein’s lawyer could push the woman into a “perjury trap.”

Ms. Ruemmler signed some emails “xoxo” and swapped photos. She joked with Mr. Epstein about the weight of visitors at New Jersey rest stops and speculated about the sexual orientation of a well-known hedge fund billionaire.

And over a series of meetings, she sought his advice on personal and professional matters, (“men aren’t interested in women my age,” one email lamented).

In 2019, while interviewing for the job at Goldman, Ms. Ruemmler told Mr. Epstein that she was wearing gifts from him. “Am totally tricked out by Uncle Jeffrey today!” she wrote.

Goldman Sachs and Ms. Ruemmler have said Mr. Epstein was never her client. But in 2018, she helped him edit a legal document that defended his 2008 agreement to plead guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Ms. Ruemmler exited a week after another elite Wall Street lawyer, Brad Karp, was ousted as chairman of Paul Weiss amid revelations that his relationship with Mr. Epstein was more extensive than previously known. Others in the worlds of art and politics have also lost their jobs.

But for the weeks leading up to her resignation, the top brass at Goldman stood behind Ms. Ruemmler.

At a widely attended partner retreat in Miami’s South Beach last week, the firm’s leadership kept Ms. Ruemmler front and center, showing no sign that her job was in jeopardy, two people familiar with the event said.

And the firm engaged in an aggressive effort to defend her, working with a prominent defamation lawyer, Tom Clare, who has been in contact with news organizations in recent weeks, pushing back on reporters’ descriptions of Ms. Ruemmler’s relationship with Mr. Epstein.

The firm’s defense centered on the fact that her interactions with Mr. Epstein occurred while she was working at Latham and predated her hiring at Goldman.

Many Goldman executives, the people said, were baffled that the bank continued to back Ms. Ruemmler.

One person who spoke to Ms. Ruemmler on Thursday said she was worn out by the relentless news coverage of her personal correspondence with Mr. Epstein.

Goldman’s support lasted until the moment Thursday afternoon when Ms. Ruemmler offered her resignation directly to Mr. Solomon, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Mr. Solomon had just concluded a round of golf at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am tournament, which pairs celebrities and business titans with professional golfers. Mr. Solomon teamed up with the pro golfer Max Greyserman, while Condoleeza Rice and Travis Kelce were among the other players.

After Mr. Solomon spoke to Ms. Ruemmler, he convened a meeting with the bank’s board of directors to inform them of her resignation, a person briefed on the board’s activities said. It was the first time the board had collectively addressed the accusations against Ms. Ruemmler since the latest emails were released in late January.

Mr. Solomon announced her resignation in an all-staff email on Thursday evening and said she would “work with our teams” until June 30 to “effect a smooth transition.”

As one of Goldman’s top executives, Ms. Ruemmler was highly compensated during her time at the firm. After she leaves Goldman, her options in the company’s stock are due to vest over the next two years and she is expected to collect about $80 million.

“I’m proud of the way Kathy has handled this, and the way we have worked through it,” Mr. Solomon said in the CNBC interview on Friday.

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