On the menu today: A whole lot of Democrats believed that the release of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein documents was going to turn into a political nightmare for President Trump — and no doubt, the additional revelations about the likes of Steve Bannon, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Elon Musk have generated some embarrassment and bad headlines. But the harder consequences are hitting the likes of Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky, and other figures on the left, as well as corporate executives. Read on.
The Epstein Files’ Bipartisan Fallout
Let’s take the wayback machine to October 24, 2014:
Former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler has told President Barack Obama she doesn’t want to be nominated for attorney general, after he asked her to consider succeeding Eric Holder, people familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press on Friday.
Ruemmler was concerned that her experience as a close adviser to the president would have led to a difficult confirmation process in the current highly charged partisan environment, the sources said, speaking on a condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private discussions. They say Ruemmler, a top official at the Justice Department before moving to the White House, was also concerned that could ignite political attacks against Obama.
CNN reported, “On Jeffrey Epstein’s 62nd birthday in 2015, Kathy Ruemmler, a former Obama White House counsel, emailed to wish him well, writing, ‘I hope you enjoy the day with your one true love. :-)’.” His response to her is too raunchy for me to share in this newsletter.
In some of their back-and-forth messages, Ruemmler discussed personal matters in her life, expressed gratitude for their “friendship,” and concluded her messages with “xo” and “xoxo.” . . .
In a statement to CNN in December, she said, “I knew Jeffrey Epstein in a professional capacity when I served as head of the white collar defense group at Latham & Watkins, and he was a business referral source. I 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 was at Latham & Watkins from June 2014 to April 2020 . . . which means she was likely at least beginning her affectionate friendship with Epstein right around the time that Obama was thinking about nominating her to be attorney general.
If you’ve seen Ruemmler’s name in the news lately . . . it’s not for good reasons:
Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler will step down after the Jeffrey Epstein files showed she had remained a close ally of the convicted sex offender through his 2019 arrest.
The Wall Street Journal revealed Ruemmler’s relationship with Epstein in 2023 when it reported she was among the powerful people regularly meeting with him in the years after he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
In the past several months, batches of documents released by Congress and the Justice Department added detail to the relationship, deepening concerns among some inside the bank about her position. Documents showed that Epstein had listed Ruemmler as a backup executor in a version of his will and called her the night he was arrested in 2019.
They also detailed their extensive chatty emails and the luxury gifts he showered on her.
Some of the documents show that in 2019, just months before Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges, Ruemmler was advising Epstein on how to respond to public criticism that he got a “sweetheart” plea deal in 2008.
That sweetheart plea in 2008 is why I think the U.S. Department of Justice ultimately had to release its documents relating to its investigations of Epstein. Not because the documents would necessarily reveal an “Epstein list” of unindicted co-conspirators and clients of his sex trafficking, but because the U.S. criminal justice system, including the U.S. Department of Justice, completely failed in its duties in 2008 in a way that has never made sense or had a sufficient explanation. Public mistrust in this matter is well-founded and justified. The process of earning back public trust requires as much disclosure as legally permitted.
In case you’ve forgotten, Epstein had been under investigation for criminal sexual acts with underage women since 2005. By 2008, he was facing 45 years in prison in a 53-page indictment. But the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami — headed at the time of the deal by Alexander Acosta, who later became President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor — negotiated a plea agreement where Epstein “pled guilty to the pending state indictment charging felony solicitation of prostitution and, pursuant to the [non-prosecution agreement], to a criminal information charging him with procurement of minors to engage in prostitution,” and was sentenced him to 18 months’ imprisonment, twelve months’ home confinement, and lifetime sex-offender status. But “Epstein served most of his sentence in a work-release program that allows him to leave jail during the day,” six days a week, and according to his victims, continued to abuse young women while on work release. Part of the deal offered by U.S. attorneys was “immunity from federal prosecution.”
What’s more, federal prosecutors concealed his plea agreement from more than 30 of his underage victims, in violation of the law, federal judges later ruled. Judge Kevin Newsom wrote in a decision, “The facts underlying this case, as we understand them, are beyond scandalous — they tell a tale of national disgrace.”
By November 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded, “Acosta’s decision to resolve the federal investigation through the NPA constitutes poor judgment. . . . The victims were not treated with the forthrightness and sensitivity expected by the Department.”
I will remind you that Epstein’s guilty plea and extraordinarily lenient jail sentence was covered in the Palm Beach media. Now, you and I may not run a background check on everyone we encounter at a party or begin a friendship with, but when you’re a billionaire, or say, the former richest man in the world, you are a likely target for scams, con men, and other people with bad intentions, and you definitely have your professional staff checking out the backgrounds of people who are seeking to ingratiate themselves to you.
As I have repeatedly noted, it is amazing how many wealthy, powerful elite men who climbed to the pinnacle of American society through keen judgment claim they hung around Jeffrey Epstein at length and never noticed anything unusual or suspicious about him. And now the same question can be asked of certain women. Did Kathryn Ruemmler send a lot of emails to a lot of men joking about their genitalia? Is that sort of thing normal in the world of white-collar criminal-defense legal work?
Now, a lot of folks on the left have been eager to use the Epstein scandal to hurt President Trump, and to a lesser extent, Steve Bannon and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Elon Musk.
But along the way, a whole lot of prominent figures on the political left have had their longtime friendships and meetups with Epstein exposed: Noam Chomsky. Bill Gates. Bill Clinton. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University Lawrence Summers.
And then there are the sudden resignations from the corporate world: Brad Karp, the longtime chairman of Paul Weiss, one of the nation’s top corporate law firms. Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, head of Dubai-based logistics group DP World. James Staley, the former chief executive of Barclays bank.
A friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, after his guilty plea in 2008, is not a crime. But it does warrant reputational damage, and everyone knows it, and this is why longtime friends of Epstein have falsely claimed they barely knew him.
For example, Lutnick said during an appearance before the Senate Appropriations Committee, “I didn’t look through the documents with any fear whatsoever because I know, and my wife knows, that I have done absolutely nothing wrong in any possible regard.” Okay, but Lutnick had previously said he cut off his friendship with Epstein in 2005, and then the released documents revealed that Lutnick and his family had lunch on Epstein’s private island in 2012. The refusal to tell the truth makes it harder to believe Lutnick’s claim that he had done “absolutely nothing wrong in any possible regard.”
The phrase “Ro Khanna and Marjorie Taylor Greene have a point” is not one that has ever appeared in this newsletter before, and I would not count on it ever appearing again. But today, as we read their quotes in the New York Times . . .
Representative Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who worked with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican congresswoman, and Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, to pass legislation compelling the release of the documents, dismissed the conspiracy theories.
But, he said in an interview, “we must ask ourselves how we have produced an elite that is so immature, reckless and arrogant.”
Ms. Greene, who fell out of favor with Mr. Trump for repeatedly demanding the release of the Epstein files, said she felt some vindication about the behavior of a male governing class they exposed. “The files are giving us an inside look into a world that we all thought existed,” she said. “And we were all called conspiracy theorists for saying so.”
. . . they do have a point. A functioning society needs well-functioning institutions, and well-functioning institutions require some degree of public trust. Across America’s political, business, and cultural worlds, we have absolutely horrible human beings in charge, who consistently shamelessly deny what’s true and believe they can just brazen it out in the face of scrutiny.
The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim contends that the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act mandating the release of all DOJ documents is “act of cravenness whose consequences will last decades.” But he also notes:
Yet there was a ring of sorts — a circle of well-connected, wealthy and politically liberal men who looked past Epstein’s taste in girls and remained on friendly terms with this charming, lavishly generous and intellectually conversant epicure. Revilers of Epstein’s pals draw a fine distinction between those who continued to associate with him after the ’08 conviction and those who didn’t. I’m not convinced that’s all-important.
They all knew — just as everybody in Hollywood knew what Harvey Weinstein was up to, claims of ignorance notwithstanding. Some of Epstein’s former pals, now protesting that their dealings with him were “limited” — word of the year — may have accepted carnal favors, though perhaps not criminal ones. Many only enjoyed the parties, business opportunities and social connections.
For America’s liberal VIPs in media, tech and politics, the moment demands self-reflection. The big-timers humiliated by association with Epstein — like the guys disgraced by MeToo allegations — almost all held conventional liberal opinions and gave lavishly to liberal causes and Democratic candidates. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed.
Today’s liberals spend a lot of energy discoursing on the American right’s pathologies, often justly. But it ought to bother them that 20 years ago the man they loathe most took a look at Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct and got the hell out of there.
ADDENDUM: From a Wall Street Journal expose on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski: “Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees — in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.”
I think even Linus Van Pelt would just want his blanket back.