Goldman Sachs endorses Kathy Remler

goldman sachs The firm strongly supported its top lawyer, Kathy Ruemmler, on Thursday, a day after a Congressional committee released intimate emails between her and notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before he joined the investment bank.

The emails include Rummler, a former White House adviser to former President Barack Obama, and Epstein exchanging opinions about President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and obese users of highway rest stops.

“See you at 2 o’clock. I ordered sushi for you,” Epstein wrote in March 2018, as part of an email thread that started when he sent her a Daily Beast article with the headline “How close is Donald Trump to mental breakdown?”

The emails came about 17 months before Epstein’s arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges. He committed suicide in a Manhattan jail several weeks after his arrest.

Mr. Ruemmler is Goldman’s Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel.

“These emails were personal communications from Kathy Ruemmler long before she joined Goldman Sachs,” Tony Fratto, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, said in a statement to CNBC.

“Kathy is an extraordinary general counsel, and we benefit from her judgment every day,” Flatt said.

Mr. Ruemmler did not respond to a request for comment Thursday about his emails with Mr. Epstein.

In 2023, Ruemmler told the Wall Street Journal that he “regrets knowing Jeffrey Epstein.”

Mr. Lemmler, who served as White House general counsel and federal prosecutor in the Obama administration, exchanged emails with Mr. Epstein while he was a partner at the law firm Latham & Watkins and global chairman of its white-collar defense and investigations practice.

The magazine reported in 2023 that Lemler met with Epstein “dozens of times in the years after working at the White House and before becoming Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer in 2020.”

“He also planned for her to join him on a trip to Paris in 2015 and a visit to Mr. Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2017,” the newspaper reported at the time. The newspaper cited a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman as saying that Epstein had introduced her to potential legal clients, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Mr. Goldman previously said that Mr. Ruemmler had a professional relationship with Mr. Epstein related to his role at Latham, but also said that Mr. Latham was not a client of the firm either.

The letters with Epstein, made public Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee, were exchanged years after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida state court in 2008 to charges of prostitution of an underage girl.

Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in prison and had to register as a sex offender.

“Mr. Trump is living proof of the adage that you are luckier than smart,” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein on August 26, 2015, according to an email the House Oversight Agency received from Mr. Epstein’s estate under subpoena.

Mr. Epstein, previously a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, replied: “I’ll give you the details when we meet. When will you be in New York?”

Ms. Remler said she was planning to go to New York in two days and was considering driving there.

“When I stop to pee or get gas at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop and observe all the people there who are at least 100 pounds overweight, I will have a mild panic attack as a result of that observation, and I will resolve to never eat another bite of food for the rest of my life out of fear that I will end up like one of these people,” Lemler wrote.

A few months later, in January 2016, Mr. Epstein emailed Mr. Ruemmler: “I stopped talking to Mr. (Bill) Clinton when he swore with all sincerity that he had done something to me. He forgot that just a few weeks earlier, he had sworn the exact opposite to me.”

On July 14, 2016, Epstein wrote to Ruemmler: “Beautiful black dress. You and Ruth Ginsburg.”

Less than 20 minutes later, Ruemmler responded: “I love that dress… Narciso Rodriguez. Where did you see that photo? RBG (the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) was my date to a state dinner.”

Epstein responded that the photo was “on every news channel today.” Ginsburg apologized to the Times for commenting about President Trump, saying, “I can’t imagine what this country would be like if Donald Trump became president,” and that her late husband would have said, “It’s time to move to New Zealand.”

“Yay,” Lemmler wrote.

The next day, Epstein wrote Ruemmler one word: “Today.”

She replied, “That’s a broad question,” to which he retorted, “I don’t use the word ‘broad’ anymore,” followed by a “scowl” emoji.

A year later, when Ginsburg’s fears became reality and Trump was elected president, Ruemmler wrote on July 20, 2017, “Trump is really stupid.”

The next day, Epstein responded, “Of course.”

Mr. Ruemmler said in an email to Mr. Epstein earlier that year that Mr. Trump was “so bad.”

“It’s worse in real life and up close,” Epstein said.

In August 2018, Ruemmler emailed Epstein a link to a New York Times op-ed about a lawsuit impeaching Trump for paying hush money to two other women to keep them quiet about alleged sexual relationships with Trump before the 2016 election. President Trump has denied having sex with women, including porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougall.

These payments were made and facilitated by Trump’s then-personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in their investigation of Trump.

“I know how dirty Donald is,” Epstein wrote in the thread. “My guess is that people in New York business who aren’t lawyers don’t understand what it means to flip a fixer.”

In a thread from earlier that year, Epstein appeared to forward a message from former Trump aide Steve Bannon, writing: “Would Bill Clinton want to join Chad and Steve? That could be very interesting, all off the record.”

Mr. Remler replied, “He may want to do that, but his lawyer would advise him not to do so. :-).”

In the same thread, Rummler wrote “barf” after Epstein said an anonymous woman told him that a man named Ben was “giving her a real hard time” by demanding that she “act like a wife.”

In June 2018, Mr. Epstein mentioned Facebook and its founder Mr. Zuckerberg in an email to Mr. Ruemmler.

“Given recent comments on the Internet and privacy, I thought you might want to raise some open questions for discussion,” Epstein wrote. “Mark wants to bring the Internet to other parts of the world…and health care…his wife is nice but boring…what do you think the challenge is…what does she or he think is social.”

— CNBC’s Ashlee Trujillo, Caleigh Keating and MC Wellons contributed to this article