Kathy Ruemmler calls Jeffrey Epstein a masterful liar in testimony
Kathy Ruemmler told House investigators Epstein was a “masterful liar,” while lawmakers pressed her over emails, gifts and calls that showed his reach inside elite circles.
Kathy Ruemmler told House Oversight investigators that Jeffrey Epstein was a “masterful liar,” casting him as someone who used prominent relationships, including hers, to legitimize himself inside powerful circles. The former Goldman Sachs chief legal officer and former White House counsel appeared Tuesday in a closed-door, transcribed interview before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington, D.C.
Her testimony came inside a broader inquiry that the committee opened March 3 into the federal government’s handling of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s 2019 death, and how Epstein and Maxwell used influence to protect their illegal activities. The committee has already released 33,295 pages of Epstein-related records from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Ruemmler said she regretted ever having anything to do with Epstein and said she would not have met him if she had known then what she knows now. She acknowledged awareness of Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in a prostitution-related case. She told lawmakers Epstein lied to her and used relationships with prominent people to legitimize himself, while she said she never saw evidence of ongoing criminal conduct. She said she would have immediately reported him to law enforcement if she had known he was abusing women or girls.
Lawmakers questioned the years-long overlap between Ruemmler and Epstein, including gifts he sent her, advice she gave him about responding to media scrutiny, and the phone call he made after his July 6, 2019 arrest on federal child sex-trafficking charges. She also said she remained willing to answer the committee’s questions.
Ruemmler, who once held top legal roles for Goldman Sachs and served as Barack Obama’s White House counsel, stepped down from Goldman Sachs at the end of June after renewed scrutiny over her emails with Epstein. Ranking member Robert Garcia called her answers “shameful” and said the emails undermined her denial of a real relationship.
Chairman James Comer said Ruemmler stayed with Epstein “until the very end” and had tried to rehabilitate his image.
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