After going down the online rabbit hole that is the “Epstein files,” courtesy of Pam Bondi and the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), the singular observation that surprised me was just how the elite wield power. The files are so much more than a list of rich, famous, powerful perverts. In fact, that almost seems to be a sideshow, even though it remains a very real evil in its own right. George Carlin once joked, sort of, when he said, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” To me, this is one of the major takeaways of the Epstein files.
Based on what I have sensed from reading about the files and the files themselves, Epstein was the world’s power broker. You can’t tell who propped him up, but someone did. Was it one intelligence agency, or was he selected by a number of power structures at once to serve as their conduit, a go-between to help them all keep their own hands clean, while he got dirty right up to his neck?
It also seems that there’s a pattern in the role of sexual deviancy in this story. It was almost like an insurance policy. If everyone is doing something, tolerating something, or enabling something that they don't want to see the light of day, this ensures universal secrecy. What is not revealed in what I saw is the mention of consequences for breaking the trust in this den of thieves. We can only imagine.
To do business with Epstein seemed to require you to sell your soul as a down payment. Then and only then would he be of service. As the Epstein files seem to indicate time and again, he could make things happen pretty quickly.
Want to smear the head of a church? Talk to Jeffrey. Want money for a propaganda film to normalize gender confusion? Talk to Jeffrey. Want access to a president, a king, or a CEO? Jeffrey can help. Want to launder some money? That’s Jeffrey’s favorite. No one has to know. But what you do need to know is that Jeffrey expects collateral.
All of this provides context to the news that Goldman Sachs’ general counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, has “resigned” following revelations from the DOJ’s Epstein files.
The players tell the story
There’s an adage in my line of work: If you just know what happened, you don’t know anything, but if you know who’s involved, you know everything.
This is true here. First off, who is Goldman Sachs? It’s a multinational investment bank and financial services company. It’s one of the very few banks that countries and other multinationals go to for banking. David Solomon is its current CEO.
There are 1,565 references to “Goldman Sachs” in the Epstein files, though from what I could tell through a cursory search, they are not incriminating. The mentions are from news articles, transactions, and other financial activity that Epstein and his circle were following. What this does tell you is just how important Goldman was in Epstein’s universe.
Ruemmler, who separated from Goldman on Feb. 12, is a former top lawyer from the Obama administration. She joined Goldman in 2020 as a partner and was put in charge of regulatory affairs. The firm later promoted her to general counsel.
Before that, her most high-profile role was when she served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, essentially filling the role of the administration’s top lawyer. She had also worked in the DOJ and was involved with major corporate crime prosecutions.
In between working for Obama and Goldman, she was a senior partner at the global law firm of Latham & Watkins, where she co-chaired a white-collar defense and investigations practice. She had also worked at the firm prior to her role as counsel for Obama.
While nothing nefarious stands out in her professional bio, it is obvious that white-collar crime has been a particular area of focus for Ruemmler.
This is an email exchange from the DOJ’s files where it appears Ruemmler is providing advice to Epstein over allegations made by a young woman. The woman had been associated with Epstein and appears to have been alleging that she had sex for money.
Obama’s former White House Counsel giving legal advice to Jeffrey Epstein:
— Professor Iratus Genium (@PGenium) February 4, 2026
“I think the point is that if she was underage, she could not legally consent to engaging in prostitution.”
Kathryn Ruemmler is currently Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs.
* *… pic.twitter.com/daPx0KD7Nb
This is an email from Feb. 13, 2016, where it seems Ruemmler was bantering with Epstein over a massage, but not Epstein’s “kind of massage.” What did she mean by that?
Here is Kathy Ruemmler in a text to Jeffrey Epstein clearly acknowledging of her knowledge of the nature of the massages pic.twitter.com/P0HvYP7jcG
— Triinu Kask (@TriinuKask) February 8, 2026
And this is that increasingly notorious email from 2019 where Ruemmler refers to Epstein as “Uncle Jeffrey.”
Unlike Epstein and his bros, Kathy Ruemmler uses punctuation and grammar.
— Wondering (@isitpolitick) February 7, 2026
Why does she spell 'Uncle" like this "Unc=e"? pic.twitter.com/RRdcFe5FeD
To speculate that she may have had a cozy relationship with Epstein is reasonable. To speculate that she had a business relationship is equally reasonable, given the documented instances of their interactions.
What's the story?
Now you know the “what” and the “who” in the story. So, what is the story?
It’s that Ruemmler’s prior relationship with Epstein, and the nature of it as revealed in the DOJ’s files, seemed to make it uncomfortable for Goldman to keep her on its leadership team. It’s that Ruemmler was allied with the likes of Obama, Epstein, and any number of other people mentioned in the files where she was involved. It’s that the files indicate she may have been aware of the kinds of illicit activities Epstein was up to, and she may have provided legal counsel that helped enable him to remain free from consequence.
Prior to her resignation from Goldman on Thursday, Goldman and Ruemmler reportedly described her relationship with Epstein as “strictly professional.” A reading of the emails suggests her idea of “professional” is in the eyes of the beholder.
Even the New York Times had to question that framing when it reported on Ruemmler’s resignation, saying, “Emails, text messages and photographs released late last month upended that narrative.”
The Times wrote, “She advised him on how to respond to tough questions about his sex crimes, discussed her dating life, advised him on how to avoid unflattering media scrutiny and addressed him as ‘sweetie’ and 'Uncle Jeffrey.’”
The same reporting revealed that Epstein “provided career advice on her move to Goldman, introduced her to well-known businesspeople and showered her with gifts of spa treatments, high-end travel and luxury items.”
Had the Epstein files not come to light, there’s every reason to believe Ruemmler would not have had to leave Goldman, and that Goldman would continue to maintain that her relationship with Epstein was professional in nature.
But if you’re Goldman, how can you defend against a New York Times piece that says, “She educated him (Epstein) on how the law differentiates between underage victims of sex crimes and adult prostitutes… She offered advice on how to knock down the credibility of one of his accusers, writing in one email that Mr. Epstein’s lawyer could push the woman into a ‘perjury trap.’”
Ruemmler has gone on record, saying Epstein was never her client. But then how can you say that her relationship was strictly professional, and explain away all of the evidence in the DOJ’s files?
The Times pointed out that “in 2018, as she helped him edit a legal document that defended his 2008 agreement to plead guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor, the subject line of their emails stated, ‘Attorney Client.’”
Ruemmler is one of many who will now likely have to spend a good deal of time and money trying to explain her relationship with Epstein. She doesn’t fit the profile of what we thought we were going to get when everyone was demanding the “Epstein list” of famous sexual predators.
But the questions she will have to answer are no less important. How did Epstein amass such power? How was he allowed to wield it so freely and over so long a period of time? Who were all of his enablers? How was his network structured, to the extent that it was? And, yes, what role did the sexual component in all of this play? Because it appears to have had a strategic purpose beyond simply “blackmail” material.
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