Goldman’s Former Top Lawyer Calls Epstein a ‘Masterful Liar’

Goldman Sachs’s former top lawyer told a House committee on Wednesday that during the six years she knew the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein she never saw “any evidence suggesting that he was abusing women or girls,” but that she had come to realize he “was a masterful liar.”

Kathryn Ruemmler, who resigned as Goldman’s general counsel and chief legal officer this year after details of her relationship with the sex offender came to light, acknowledged in her testimony that she had offered Mr. Epstein advice, accepted gifts from him and “sometimes irreverently” exchanged emails with him.

“I can see now that he used me and other respectable people to legitimize his standing, and I know now that he often exaggerated his relationship with me to others,” Ms. Ruemmler, 55, said in her opening statement at a closed-door hearing with the House Oversight Committee. A copy of the statement was obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Ruemmler is among the most high-profile people on Wall Street whose careers have been hurt by their associations with Mr. Epstein. In February, Ms. Ruemmler resigned from her job at Goldman, where she was paid $25 million a year, after a flood of emails released by the Justice Department revealed that her dealings with Mr. Epstein had been far more extensive and personal than previously known.

The emails showed that she had socialized and joked with him, and had even called him “sweetie” at times. They also revealed that Ms. Ruemmler had offered him advice on handling the past allegations of soliciting sex from a minor that led to his 2008 guilty plea in Florida and a federal nonprosecution agreement.

In her testimony on Wednesday, she said her relationship with Mr. Epstein began in summer 2014 when she had just left as White House counsel during the Obama administration to become one of the leaders of the white-collar defense team at Latham & Watkins.

The committee, which has been investigating the Justice Department’s handling of its investigations of Mr. Epstein and his decades-long sex trafficking operation, is calling in more than a dozen people who once associated with Mr. Epstein to answer questions. Many of his former associates and friends, like Ms. Ruemmler, agreed to testify voluntarily.

She told the committee that she had learned of his 2008 conviction on a charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl only after she had met him. She said that she had initially found Mr. Epstein to be open and truthful in discussing his guilty plea in Florida and that he had expressed remorse.

Ms. Ruemmler, a former federal prosecutor, and most other committee witnesses have said they learned about the extent of Mr. Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls and young women only after his arrest in July 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. She said, “I was shocked by the indictment.”

Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said during a break in the hearing that “it is difficult to see how she’s being completely truthful.” He said Ms. Ruemmler had known about the 2008 conviction, “yet she continued to have to interact, to be friendly, to make jokes about massages that entire time.”

Ms. Ruemmler said she had stopped associating with Mr. Epstein after his arrest. He committed suicide a month later while in federal custody. In April 2020, Ms. Ruemmler joined Goldman as its global head of regulatory affairs, and she became the Wall Street bank’s general counsel a year later.

She said that, based on her training as a prosecutor and Mr. Epstein’s explanations, she thought the decision by federal prosecutors in Florida not to charge him seemed like a sound one. She later advised him on how to address questions about that deal, the emails released by the Justice Department show.

She told the committee, “As we now know, his conduct was much worse and more sinister.” She added, “In light of everything we know now, that resolution was deeply flawed.” In her statement, Ms. Ruemmler said she had gotten to know Mr. Epstein after he referred a banking client to her.

Ms. Ruemmler, in her statement, did not name the banking client Mr. Epstein had introduced her to. But shortly after she joined Latham & Watkins, she became one of the lead attorneys in working to resolve complex tax and regulatory issues for Edmond de Rothschild Holding, a Swiss bank. The Justice Department files show that she wrote a letter in 2015 confirming that Mr. Epstein was serving as a consultant in the relationship. And later that year, Ariane de Rothschild, who runs the bank, signed a $25 million consulting contract with Mr. Epstein. A spokeswoman for Ms. Rothschild could not immediately be reached for comment.

In the process, Ms. Ruemmler and Ms. Rothschild became friends and sometimes socialized together with Mr. Epstein.

Ms. Ruemmler said Mr. Epstein had also suggested she might be able to do some legal work involving Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder, but that did not materialize.

When the Justice Department files were first released, it seemed Ms. Ruemmler might weather the storm of critical media stories over her past friendship with Mr. Epstein because she maintained the support of David Solomon, Goldman’s chief executive officer. But others within Goldman were uncomfortable with her staying on as the bank’s chief legal officer and also serving on the bank’s reputational risk committee.

In 2025, Ms. Ruemmler received a compensation package valued at $25 million, according to a company filing in March.

After she announced she would step down, Mr. Solomon expressed disappointment with her decision and asked her to stay on through June to help with the search for a new general counsel. The bank recently extended her stay as a paid consultant because the search has taken longer than anticipated.

Other people who have appeared before committee for questioning include former President Bill Clinton, the retail magnate Leslie Wexner and the billionaire Bill Gates. The committee has an interview scheduled next week with James Staley, a Wall Street executive who for years was Mr. Epstein’s main champion at JPMorgan Chase, where Mr. Epstein did much of his banking for more than a decade.

In June, Leon Black, a private equity billionaire, appeared before the same committee to answer questions about his dealings with Mr. Epstein and why he had paid him $170 million in fees for what Mr. Black said was tax and estate advice. But the hearing was cut short when Mr. Black, who had frequently socialized with Mr. Epstein, refused to answer questions about any nondisclosure agreements he might have signed with women.

Representative James R. Comer, the panel’s chairman and a Kentucky Republican, promptly issued two subpoenas to Mr. Black, one seeking copies of those agreements and another one directing him to testify under oath. A spokeswoman for the committee said Mr. Black was cooperating with its requests and was set to return for a sworn deposition on Sept. 3.

Michael Gold contributed reporting.