Kathryn Ruemmler in a photo released from among the Epstein files./U.S. Justice Department
National Legal and Policy Center has been a repeated critic of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon (pictured above), due to numerous examples of poor judgment. Most recently he continued to support the company’s general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler despite her close, friendly ties to Jeffrey Epstein. With the weight of the evidence building about her personal efforts to rehabilitate Epstein’s image and welcoming his personal gestures, she announced earlier this week that she would resign — in June.
Solomon, Goldman Sachs and its executive leadership and board are left to deal with the reputational fallout. Apparently accountability for Ruemmler’s embarrassing Epstein connections can wait almost five months. NLPC discussed the developments with Law.com:
But Luke Perlot, associate director of the Corporate Integrity Project at the Falls Church, Virginia-based NLPC, said the delayed departure of Ruemmler until this summer reflects poorly on Goldman Sachs and Solomon.
“Despite all the controversy, despite the ugly and embarrassing nature of the disclosures, Goldman had continued to back her. David Solomon continued to back her,” Perlot said.
“Her transition should be sooner than June 30. It (the delay) sort of signals they’re not taking this all that seriously”…
Earlier this month, the NLPC’s Perlot wrote that the Ruemmler matter fits a broader pattern of corporate governance concerns under Solomon.
“Goldman Sachs investors are learning, or at least the should be, yet again, that a world-class brand is not the same thing as world-class governance,” Perlot said.
On Friday, Perlot wrote that “more effective intervention from the board of directors to deal with Solomon and his team … could have saved the company and its shareholders from the reputational damage brought by this scandal.”
NLPC has filed a number of shareholder proposals at Goldman Sachs in recent years. These include a proposal that the company name an independent chairman. Solomon is currently chair.
The group’s long list of grievances with Solomon includes his support of environmental, social and governance initiatives to missteps in the company’s consumer lending business.
NLPC has actually presented independent chair proposals at Goldman Sachs for three consecutive years, from 2022 to 2024.
As for Ruemmler, more embarrassing details about her relationship with Epstein came out today in a Wall Street Journal article about Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling scout who helped the sex offender recruit girls. The story details how Brunel intended to provide information about Epstein to a U.S. Attorney in New York in what he hoped would be in exchange for immunity — however, he disappeared instead. From the report:
Epstein had discovered that negotiations with Brunel were taking place, the files show. On May 3, he fired off an email to Kathy Ruemmler, an attorney he corresponded with regularly. He wrote that Brunel was planning to go to the U.S. Attorney’s office the following week and one of Brunel’s friends had “asked for 3 million dollars so that Jean Luc would not go in.”
Epstein told Ruemmler that Brunel was afraid he would be arrested if he didn’t show up. “I want to know more,” Epstein wrote. He also dismissed Brunel’s lawyer and his friend as “scammers” and cast doubt on their credibility.
Ruemmler responded hours later, asking Epstein to call and explain. The next day, she wrote: “Awake now. Talking to Poe in 20 mins.” Gregory Poe was Epstein’s lawyer in Washington, D.C.
Ruemmler has enlisted a spokeswoman to do her talking for her, with all the recent media attention:
“This was another instance of Epstein attempting to engage Ms. Ruemmler on a matter about which she had no knowledge, and she appropriately directed him to his legal counsel,” said Jennifer Connelly, a spokeswoman for Ruemmler. She declined to specify which legal counsel. Ruemmler has said she never represented Epstein and regretted her association with him.
As the extent of her relationship with Epstein became clear in the recent files, Ruemmler said last week she would resign from Goldman Sachs, where she is general counsel, in June.
Poe said he didn’t talk with Ruemmler or Epstein about Brunel “on May 4, 2016 or at any other time.” He said he had a scheduled call that day with Ruemmler to discuss his work on a legal motion to quash a subpoena directed at Epstein. “My engagement by Jeffrey Epstein was limited,” Poe said, adding that he terminated work for Epstein in August 2016.
Ruemmler’s current official narrative is that she didn’t know anything about the thing for which she referred Jeffrey Epstein to his lawyer about (did he lose his number?), sometime before or after she talked to that lawyer of his herself, because of course she was not his lawyer (don’t you say she was!), although she did allegedly carry on a years-long adulterous affair with another of Epstein’s lawyers, during the timeframe in which she was “totally tricked out by Uncle Jeffrey” with “Jeffrey boots, handbag, and watch!”
In other words, she’s a perfectly honorable not-lawyer to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who fully deserves to stay on the job at one of Wall Street’s top dealmaking banks for another four months and further boost her bank account and retirement savings.
You can find the Wall Street Journal article here and The Law.com article is available here.
