When I first read that Goldman Sachs’ general counsel, Kathy Ruemmler, had resigned because of ribald email exchanges with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, I questioned the outrage. The New York Post reported in an “exclusive” that the email that ultimately did her in began with Ruemmler wishing Epstein a “Happy Birthday! I hope you enjoy the day with your one true love. :-)”
Epstein responded: “They say that men usually give a name to their penis, as it would be inappropriate to make love to a total stranger.”
Ruemmler, a high-powered criminal lawyer who served as counsel to the Obama administration, replied: “Hard to believe that there is still an open question about whether men are the inferior gender.”
The Post cited an unnamed source who said that Ruemmler casually discussing Epstein’s penis was deemed beyond the pale and ultimately did her in. As anyone who has ever worked in a professional services business knows, one often engages in banter with a client to build rapport and appeal to their personality and interests. Moreover, if a woman, particularly one of Ruemmler’s prominence, suggested that I was proof positive that men are inferior, I wouldn’t perceive the comment kindly.
Bloomberg banking reporter Todd Gillespie focused less on Ruemmler’s racy emails and highlighted exchanges that immediately changed my perception.
Ruemmler advised Epstein’s legal team on strategy, criticized his accusers as motivated by money, and discussed efforts to rehabilitate his public image. In one email, she wrote: “Victim’s rights, my ass.”
Ruemmler has maintained she never represented Epstein and was only peripheral to his legal struggles. Yet emails made public reveal that she offered advice to Epstein’s legal team on how to challenge the credibility of Virginia Giuffre, one of his alleged victims, and expressed a desire to depose her. Ruemmler’s emails referenced efforts to suppress Giuffre’s 2015 Good Morning America interview, which never aired. Giuffre died by suicide last year.
American Prospect’s David Dayen identified more damning exchanges Ruemmler had with Epstein, particularly given that she reportedly was once under consideration to become Obama’s attorney general. Ruemmler, then working at the Washington law firm Latham & Watkins, shared with Epstein that she was looking to wage a campaign to discredit Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who three days earlier had sent a blistering 13-page letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White, chastising her for failing to finalize long-delayed investor protections and for being soft on securities law enforcement.
Epstein responded, “Good[.] mj is good.”
Ruemmler replied: “Yes, and EW is the worst.”
The SEC has never been overly tough on big Wall Street firms, admittedly in part because it lacks the budget and legal firepower to take them on. An SEC position was long viewed as a résumé-burnishing opportunity before landing at a big white-shoe firm and representing the sorts of clients the agency was supposed to pursue.
Senator Warren had taken note of White’s record.
In 520 settlements to that point, the SEC sought admissions of wrongdoing in only 19 cases, and in 11 of those, the companies merely stipulated to a broad series of facts rather than to the legal violations themselves.
White also allowed financial institutions convicted of securities law violations to continue enjoying special regulatory privileges by granting waivers to preserve their eligibility. That included companies found guilty of criminal misconduct, for the first time in a decade.
Warren noted that White had to recuse herself from nearly 50 investigations because her husband, John White, was a corporate defense lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and actively engaged in defending clients under SEC investigation. With a five-member SEC split between three Democrats and two Republicans, these constant recusals invited deadlock on key cases and, in some instances, blocked prosecutions.
According to Dayen, when White served as a U.S. attorney in Manhattan in 1994, she pioneered what is known as a deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA, for corporations, allowing them to settle criminal prosecutions with only a fine, provided they promised to be on their best behavior going forward.
General Motors negotiated a DPA with the Justice Department in 2015 for selling vehicles with defective ignition switches that resulted in more than 100 passenger deaths and hundreds of injuries. GM’s robotaxi subsidiary, Cruise, secured another DPA in 2024 to settle criminal charges that the company deceived regulators investigating an accident involving one of its vehicles.
GM CEO Mary Barra was CEO when GM negotiated its DPA and was chair of Cruise’s board when the subsidiary negotiated its DPA.
Boeing in 2021 negotiated a DPA in the wake of two fatal and high-profile crashes of its 737 Max 8 jet that killed 346 passengers. It was not deemed in violation of that agreement even after a Boeing aircraft door blew out mid-flight in April 2024, and the company admitted possible shortcomings in its anti-fraud compliance program.
It is telling that Ruemmler sought to defend Mary Jo White given her record, and that she turned to Epstein for counsel and support. It is also telling that Ruemmler reportedly was a close confidante of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and that, despite concerns from Goldman partners, he did not want her to resign.
The media has given considerable coverage to the latest release of the DOJ’s Epstein files, but scant attention has been paid to an esteemed judge’s decision that claims against Bank of America for allegedly “recklessly disregarding” Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking can proceed to trial.
Jed Rakoff, a longtime judge in the Southern District of New York known for his scrutiny of Wall Street settlements, determined that allegations that Bank of America knowingly benefited from Epstein’s trafficking venture and obstructed enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act are legally plausible and deserve to be tested in court.
One allegation in the Bank of America complaint stands out. The plaintiff asserts that a bank employee previously served as Epstein’s banker at JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank and had “direct personal knowledge” of his trafficking activity. If proven, that would raise serious questions about internal escalation procedures, compliance oversight, and institutional memory inside major financial institutions.
JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle similar claims. Deutsche Bank paid $75 million.
The JPMorgan record is also part of this broader pattern. Sen. Ron Wyden last year cited unsealed court documents showing communications between Epstein and senior JPMorgan executives, including Asset & Wealth Management CEO Mary Erdoes, known as the “billionaire whisperer,” who served as Epstein’s primary JPMorgan contact. Wyden said the documents suggest the bank underreported suspicious activity while Epstein was alive and then retroactively filed reports totaling more than $1 billion in suspicious transactions.
Wyden stated it was “clear” the bank should face a criminal investigation and called for the Treasury Department to release its Epstein-related files. There has been no comprehensive public release of such materials.
JPMorgan has said its relationship with Epstein has been extensively litigated and publicly documented. CEO Jamie Dimon has said he was unaware of Epstein’s reputation or the scope of the bank’s relationship with him. Wyden alleged that Epstein was one of JPMorgan’s biggest clients.
Notably, JPMorgan under Dimon’s leadership signed a deferred prosecution agreement in 2020 with the Justice Department to settle allegations it manipulated the precious metals and Treasury markets. Bank of America last September resolved Justice Department allegations that two of its employees manipulated the cash and Treasury markets.
Deferred prosecution agreements, regulatory waivers, quiet settlements — the pattern is familiar.
The New York Times today featured a story about all the people whose careers have been harmed because of their relationships with Epstein. Absent from that accounting were JPMorgan’s Mary Erdoes, mentioned as a possible successor to Dimon, and Dimon himself.
It appears reputational proximity to Epstein is disqualifying. Financial enablement of his enterprise is not.
For the record, there were senior JPMorgan executives who objected to the bank’s relationship with Epstein. They are no longer there.
I consider them unsung heroes. You can read about them here.