THE NEW YORK TIMES PROBABLY PATTED ITSELF on the head for getting lawyer extraordinaire Kathy Ruemmler to sit for a three-hour conversation about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Billed as “her first in-depth interview” since embarrassing details spilled out about her involvement, the piece promised insight into how a whip smart lawyer got herself tangled in Epstein’s web.
You don’t have to read far to see that this is essentially an apologia for Ruemmler, designed to mend her battered reputation and salvage her position as general counsel of Goldman Sachs, where she took home $25 million last year. How this puff piece got through the scrutiny of the august editors of the Times is mystifying.
Paging Aunt Bea.
The fingerprints of expensively-paid PR advisors are all over the piece, starting with Ruemmler’s carefully-chosen attire in the accompanying photos. Shorn of the top designer brands she swooned over in her emails to Epstein (he gifted her an Hermès bag and a Fendi fur coat, among other niceties), she wore a dowdy, mid-calf, powder blue dress that made her look like the head of a selective nursery school or a corporate Aunt Bea.
Penned by former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori, whom Ruemmler contacted “to hear her side of the Epstein story,” the thrust of the essay is that Big Law bears responsibility for her relationship with the pedophile:
The unsettling truth that emerges from these conversations and my reporting says less about the content of the emails and much more about the culture of big law firms. She looked past his 2008 conviction — for procuring a minor for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution — in the pursuit of business. Many other prominent criminal defense lawyers and former federal prosecutors would have made the same decision, and that tells you everything you need to know about how unreliable and corroded the legal world has become.
Got that? Ruemmler didn’t make the choice to pal around with Epstein. It was the corrupt culture of Big Law that pushed her into his orbit – in her case, Latham & Watkins, where she landed after serving as the White House Counsel under President Obama, before joining Goldman.
No doubt, Big Law expects their expensive star hires to deliver the goods, and socializing with influential people, however unsavory, is part of the game. In Ruemmler’s case, though, she went the extra mile.
A moonlighting Latham & Watkins partner.
According to documents, she advised Epstein on a range of issues over the years, including how to defend his “sweetheart” 2008 plea deal from attack, media strategies to quash negative stories, and settlements with victims – even though he was never a client of Latham’s. And she was there in court when he was arraigned on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.
Yet, she professes ignorance. “If I had seen or heard anything to suggest that Epstein was harming women or girls, I would have taken action to stop it,” she tells Khardori. (What actions, pray tell?)
Ruemmler also deployed the woman card as cover. “She attributed the friendly tone of her emails to the cultural demands of working as a woman in a space heavily dominated by men,” writes Khardori. Being “the only woman in the room oftentimes, you have to figure out how to get people to listen to you,” she explains.
So that’s why she called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey,” “wonderful Jeffrey,” and “sweetie,” and signed off emails with “xoxo” and “xo”! Is that what a girl has to do to get traction in this world? Oh, puh-leeze.
Dershowitz and Starr as her moral compasses.
And here’s another kicker: She thought Epstein couldn’t be all that awful because Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr were part of his 2008 legal team. “Surely, they wouldn’t have chosen to work for someone they knew had committed the crimes Mr. Epstein was accused of,” writes Khardori about her reasoning.
I nearly fell off my chair on that one. Dershowitz, lawyer to Claus Von Bulow and O.J. Simpson, having moral qualms about representing the guilty? And don’t get me started on Starr, the self-righteous former U.S. solicitor general best known for his salacious report on Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. (Fun fact: Starr got booted as president of Baylor University in 2016 for ignoring sexual assault complaints made by women against members of the football team.)
Falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
But what really got my goat is how the Times writer fell for all this hook, line and sinker – and his editors apparently just went along.
“She did not duck any of my questions,” writes Khardori. “Her remorse felt genuine, her stunned reaction sincere.” He calls her “oddly naïve” – which is itself an odd description – noting that she told him that she had no idea of “how serious and extensive Mr. Epstein’s crimes were until she heard the prosecutors describe the charges against him in court in 2019.”
Is that believable, considering Khardori calls her “one of the most impressive lawyers of her generation”?
Certainly not to Boies Schiller Flexner partner Sigrid McCawley, who’s been at the forefront in representing Epstein’s victims, including the late Virginia Giuffre. “It was insulting to the survivors when it was clear Ruemmler was his ally,” McCawley told me. “She was active in sustaining him and covering up for him. The documents don’t lie, and her words are there.”
Yet, Khardori largely glosses over Ruemmler’s extensive involvement in the Epstein matter, though her name appears in about 8,400 documents, many of which indicate her knowledge of his crimes.
What I find particularly irritating is the article’s condescending tone: “this is a world that trades on personal connections,” writes Khardori, as if we’re all country-bumpkins. He’s picking up a theme Ruemmler makes repeatedly: “I would not have been very effective in my job if I took the position that I would not meet with people who had been convicted of crimes or accused of crimes.” The subtext is that Big Law is dirty and Ruemmler was just doing what she had to do to survive in that swamp.
No surprise, then, that Khardori ends his essay with a grand indictment of the entire system:
Castigating Ms. Ruemmler will not change the incentives that allowed Mr. Epstein to evade prosecution for so long, and it will not fix the deficiencies in federal law enforcement and the American legal system that ensure people like Mr. Epstein will always find a home.
That might be true, but that’s hardly the point. The bottom line is that Ruemmler was close to Epstein, enjoyed the fruits of that relationship, and stuck with him long after he became a pariah. You could say she was a true friend. If only she owned it.
Damn girl! GET ON IT AND STAY ON IT!