New court doc asserts former Obama WH counsel advised Jeffrey Epstein during critical reputational and legal battles

By Em Steck, Andrew Kaczynski, CNN

(CNN) — A recently unsealed federal court filing suggests that Kathy Ruemmler, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama and now the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, acted as a key legal adviser to Jeffrey Epstein during some of his most perilous moments, raising questions about her public account that their relationship was limited and informal.

Ruemmler was among the many high-profile names who appeared in a trove of Epstein emails and text messages released last November. As CNN’s KFile reported, she was one of the most frequently referenced, with more than 100 exchanges between her and the convicted sex offender over several years. Ruemmler’s name also appeared repeatedly on Epstein’s schedules for planned meetings between 2014 and 2019 while she worked at the law firm Latham and Watkins.

The recent filing is part of a civil lawsuit brought by Epstein victims against the executors of his estate, which is seeking to shield thousands of emails from disclosure by asserting attorney-client privilege. Privilege would not typically apply, experts say, to correspondence between professional acquaintances discussing business — the kind of limited, informal relationship Ruemmler says she had with Epstein.

In arguing why the contents of those emails should remain confidential, the estate’s filing portrays Ruemmler as one of a small group of lawyers repeatedly consulted by Epstein as he faced mounting legal exposure and damaging press coverage in the years leading up to his 2019 arrest.

According to the estate’s descriptions of the emails, Ruemmler was involved in advising Epstein on a range of topics, including efforts to preserve his controversial 2008 plea deal, drafting and shaping proposed public statements, editing correspondence with a US senator, and even discussions related to victim settlements.

Tony Fratto, a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler works as the general counsel for the bank, said in a statement, “It is irresponsible and wrong for CNN to draw conclusions about the content of communications from brief and generic descriptions of emails you haven’t seen. Kathy was not involved in the privilege assertions or the descriptions in the log. As Kathy has told CNN before, she never represented Epstein and never advocated on his behalf to a third party. She was one of many prominent lawyers he informally reached out to for advice.”

On Monday night, The Wall Street Journal reported that a senior Goldman Sachs executive discussed preparing a contingency plan for Ruemmler to leave following reporting on her past ties to Epstein, a characterization the bank strongly denied.

Notably, the email descriptions also assert that Ruemmler was among a group of attorneys who worked with Epstein in 2015 to push back on a planned “Good Morning America” interview with one of his most outspoken victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Epstein’s estate claims that Ruemmler helped draft a legal letter sent to ABC News in April 2015 threatening legal action if the piece aired, which it never did.

A ​CNN analysis​ found that Ruemmler is included in more than 300 emails in the privilege log, which shows thousands of entries between Epstein and his attorneys from as early as 2008 through July 2019. The logs were provided as part of an ongoing civil suit by two alleged victims against the executors of Epstein’s estate.

While there are often a handful of people on those emails, including lawyers and sometimes a journalist and a public relations crisis professional, there are more than 150 emails between just Ruemmler and Epstein.

Far from a passive observer who was added to email chains among Epstein’s lawyers, Ruemmler appears in the log as an active participant in many instances. She is listed as the sender of at least 135 of those emails, according to the privilege log.

The recently released log suggests that Ruemmler played a far bigger role in advising Epstein than previously known — adding critical details to the portrait that emerged from the trove of messages released by the House Oversight Committee in November. While those messages displayed a level of familiarity and at times friendly banter between Ruemmler and Epstein, the description of the privilege logs indicates something far more extensive — a relationship that on its face, and according to experts, appeared to be that of an attorney and a client.

In response to questions about her relationship with Epstein, Ruemmler told CNN last month she “did not represent him and was not compensated by him.”

“I was one of a number of lawyers Epstein informally reached out to for advice,” Ruemmler said in her statement to CNN, adding that she did not advocate on his behalf to “third parties” and “not the press, not a court, not a government official.”

Ruemmler herself did not respond to additional requests for comment for this piece.

Ruemmler has characterized her relationship with Epstein —who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges — as limited and professional. She said she only knew him as a “business referral source.” Epstein in turn once referred to Ruemmler as “my great defender.”

Ruemmler has also repeatedly said she regrets ever knowing Epstein, and she told CNN last month she had “no knowledge of any new or ongoing unlawful activity on his part.”

The privilege log

While the contents of the emails remain sealed, the log offers a window into how Epstein and his attorneys navigated some of his most perilous legal and media battles after his 2008 conviction and incarceration for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

The 513-page privilege log was provided in a suit against against Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, who served as Epstein’s attorney and accountant. The suit alleges the two acted as co-conspirators in facilitating Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes, which the two have strenuously denied. A lawyer for the men told the New York Times they “emphatically reject the allegations of wrongdoing” in the lawsuit and called the claims “baseless and legally frivolous.”

There’s no indication that Ruemmler is part of the effort to shield the emails from the public by asserting attorney-client privilege. She has maintained that she was not Epstein’s attorney.

Her law firm at the time of the correspondence, Latham and Watkins, previously told CNN Epstein was never a client of the firm.

Latham and Watkins did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Ruemmler joined the firm in the summer of 2014 and left in 2020 to work at Goldman Sachs.

But according to experts CNN spoke with, Ruemmler’s assertions that she was not his attorney do not matter when it comes to attorney-client privilege. It is the client who asserts privilege.

“Attorney client privilege is the privilege of the client with regard to any communication made to someone for the purposes of legal advice. It does not matter if there’s not a formal representation document or an agreement,” said Ken Broun, an emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

If, for example, Epstein reached out to Ruemmler for legal advice and she gave it, those communications could be considered privileged.

“It’s in the mind of the client that matters. But the client would have to have both a reasonable expectation that that person would provide legal advice to them and that the statement was being made in confidence,” Broun added.

Ruemmler’s assertions that she was never compensated by or represented Epstein also do not mean she wasn’t providing him legal counsel or advice in some capacity.

“You don’t need to be compensated by someone to establish an attorney-client relationship, number one,” said Elise Maizel, an assistant professor of law at Michigan State University College of Law and an expert on attorney-client privilege. Maizel also said Ruemmler could be viewed as having an attorney-client relationship with Epstein even if she never signed a formal engagement letter or represented him as his counsel in a particular lawsuit.

“That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an attorney-client relationship established such that the privilege could apply,” Maizel said.

Legal memorandum and correspondence with a US senator

Ruemmler’s insistence that she was not compensated by Epstein places the extensive legal work described in the filings in the realm of pro bono representation. Such unpaid work by attorneys like Ruemmler, who made $22.5 million in 2024 as Goldman Sachs’ chief legal officer, is often worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. That work is typically reserved for poor clients or public-interest matters, not for wealthy convicted sex offenders.

The newly unsealed filing suggests that Ruemmler’s involvement went far beyond casual and informal work. Rather than a distant professional acquaintance, the record portrays her as a trusted legal confidant repeatedly consulted at moments when Epstein’s legal and reputational stakes were highest.

Among the most consequential work described is a legal memorandum the estate says that Ruemmler sent Epstein in 2015 analyzing a federal lawsuit that threatened to unravel his controversial 2008 non-prosecution agreement that had shielded him from federal charges. Ruemmler sent the email to Epstein in May 2015, according to the log, with the subject line “CVRA Memorandum 04.16.15.pdf.” The log describes the entry as “providing memorandum containing legal advice.”

Other entries place Ruemmler in discussions about correspondence with lawmakers as political scrutiny intensified.

In early 2019, as then-Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska pressed the Justice Department to investigate how federal prosecutors handled Epstein’s case, the log describes multiple emails in which Ruemmler provided legal advice on a proposed response.

One entry shows Ruemmler sending Epstein an email with the subject line “Suggested edits”; the estate’s description reads, “Attorney client communication regarding draft correspondence with Senator Ben Sasse.” The attachment is titled, “Letter to HONORABLE BEN SASSE.doc Edits 2-9-19.doc.”

According to the log, no other attorneys were included in that exchange.

One entry in the log indicates Epstein relied upon Ruemmler to take a first pass at drafting public statements responding to allegations against him.

In an email sent on October 9, 2016, Epstein wrote to Indyke, his longtime lawyer, that he was “waiting for kathy’s first pass” of a proposed statement addressing what the estate later described as inaccurate sex-abuse claims in the media.

Just over 30 minutes later, according to the privilege log, Ruemmler was included as a recipient on a related email thread discussing the same draft outline, which suggest her direct involvement in reviewing or shaping the statement.

The killed ABC News interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre

The email logs also provide previously unreported details about a crucial incident that helped Epstein avoid public scrutiny of his sex crimes at a time when he was attempting to rehabilitate his reputation. In early 2015, ABC News was preparing to air a lengthy on-camera interview with Giuffre, who was among the first to publicly accuse Epstein of sex trafficking and abuse.

When Epstein learned of the interview in April 2015, he quickly gathered his attorneys on an email chain. Among them was Ruemmler, who in the previous year had left her job in the Obama White House and was working as a high-dollar attorney at Latham and Watkins.

The log says that in late April 2015, Ruemmler was across more than a dozen emails appearing to discuss the ABC News interview. The emails are sometimes described as “negotiations with media outlet to prevent false allegations from being aired” and “how to deal with media coverage of claims against Epstein.”

One email between Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, in which Ruemmler is listed as an attorney, is described in the log as “Attorney client communication regarding Good Morning America Interview with REDACTED.”

A copy of ABC’s comment request to Epstein was included in the files released by the House Oversight Committee. The request contained a detailed summary of Giuffre’s allegations, including claims that Epstein sexually abused her beginning when she was a teenager, trafficked other underage girls, and arranged sexual encounters with powerful men. Among them, according to Giuffre, was then-British royal, Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his royal titles last year over his association with Epstein.

Ruemmler is listed as sending several emails to Epstein and his attorney, Martin Weinberg, on April 22 and 23, 2015.

At least one email chain that Ruemmler sent Epstein and his counsel has the subject line “Privileged and Confidential,” suggesting that she made the decision to characterize the exchange as an attorney-client privileged conversation.

She attached a document called “Letter to ABC (Draft 3)kr.doc,” seemingly adding her initials to the document’s name. The April 23 email is described by the estate as “communication providing draft of a letter to the press seeking to correct the record.”

The following day, April 24, 2015, Weinberg sent an official letter to ABC News on Epstein’s behalf — a copy of which was released in November by House investigators.

In the letter, Weinberg argued that Giuffre’s allegations were uncorroborated, outdated, and contradicted by other evidence, and warned ABC News that airing the interview would be “grossly negligent or worse.”

“If ABC has concerns about her credibility with respect to any allegation, it must decline to republish all of her allegations,” the letter from Weinberg read.

Weinberg, who has in the past denied that Ruemmler represented Epstein, told CNN, “I regret that I cannot discuss any communications for which the Estate has claimed privilege.”

The ABC News interview never aired.

Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, described in her posthumously published memoir feeling proud to have done the interview and devastated that it never aired.

“I’d been defeated once again by the people I was trying to speak out against. And I couldn’t help but wonder, if a media giant like ABC could be shut down in its attempts to reveal the truth, was there any hope for survivors like me?”

Years later, a leaked 2019 recording captured then-“Good Morning America” co-host Amy Robach expressing frustration that the segment was not broadcast.

“We had everything,” Robach said.

Robach declined to comment to CNN.

A spokesperson for ABC News pointed CNN to a past statement on the incident: “At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story.”

CNN’s Sylvie Kirsch contributed to this report.

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