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Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathy Ruemmler will step down on June 30, 2026, after newly released federal records exposed a years-long email relationship with Jeffrey Epstein that included affectionate language and gifts, reopening questions about how America’s most powerful institutions handled, excused, or minimized contact with a convicted sex offender long after his crimes were public.
The resignation lands inside a broader political and legal moment: the U.S. Department of Justice says it has now published millions of pages tied to Epstein investigations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a disclosure pipeline that is forcing fresh scrutiny of old relationships and long-buried correspondence.
A Resignation Tied to Newly Visible Emails
In statements reported by the Associated Press and Reuters, Ruemmler framed her exit as a decision made because the renewed attention had become a distraction to the firm.
Goldman’s chief executive, David Solomon, accepted the resignation and set the June 30 effective date.
The emails at the center of the controversy, described in detail by AP and Reuters, show Ruemmler using familiar terms for Epstein, including “Uncle Jeffrey,” and at points describing him as an “older brother,” even though Epstein’s 2008 sex-crime conviction and sex-offender registration were already part of the public record.
What the Documents Allege About Gifts and Advice
Reporting based on the newly released records describes Epstein sending Ruemmler gifts during the period after she left government service and returned to private practice, with Reuters describing luxury items and a massage among the gifts referenced in the DOJ materials and email trail.
Reuters also reports that the correspondence includes episodes where Ruemmler advised Epstein on how to handle press inquiries as scrutiny intensified again in 2019, before his arrest that year.
Ruemmler, through statements quoted in coverage, has characterized her interactions as professional and has said she did not know of any ongoing criminal conduct.
Why the Timing Matters
The new disclosures exist because the Justice Department says it published “over 3 million additional pages” on January 30, 2026, bringing the total production to “nearly 3.5 million pages,” plus thousands of videos and a large image trove, as part of compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
In practice, that scale creates a second, parallel storyline: even without new criminal charges, reputations can collapse when internal communications become searchable, quotable, and shareable, especially when those communications appear to soften or sanitize a figure whose conduct has been widely documented.
The Compliance Problem for a Wall Street General Counsel
A chief legal officer is not a normal executive. At a firm like Goldman, the role sits on top of legal risk, regulatory relationships, internal controls, and the firm’s public credibility when crisis hits.
That makes the gift issue central, even if much of the conduct described occurred before Ruemmler joined Goldman. Corporate ethics codes typically restrict gifts and benefits because they create conflicts of interest or the appearance of influence.
Goldman’s published code of business conduct and ethics outlines its expectations around conflicts and integrity standards for personnel.
Reuters’ legal analysis points out a key nuance: conduct that looks damaging in public can still be hard to map cleanly onto attorney ethics rules, especially when a lawyer is not formally representing a person as a client. The reputational damage, though, is often immediate and unforgiving.
Epstein’s Financial Network Keeps Pulling Institutions Into Court
@cnn Newly released email exchanges add fresh details to the relationship between Kathy Ruemmler and Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler is a former Obama White House counsel and now one of the highest-paid lawyers in the country as the chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reports. Update: After CNN’s reporting on this story, Ruemmler said in a statement that she plans to resign from Goldman Sachs.
The Ruemmler resignation arrives after years of litigation and settlement activity centered on banks that handled Epstein’s money.
A U.S. judge approved a $290 million settlement resolving claims that JPMorgan Chase enabled Epstein’s abuse by keeping him as a client and ignoring red flags.
A U.S. judge also approved a $75 million settlement involving Deutsche Bank over similar allegations tied to its relationship with Epstein.
Those outcomes do not decide the facts of every allegation in open court, but they show the financial-system dimension of the Epstein story: institutions can face massive costs years later when internal warnings, compliance failures, or repeated exceptions come into view.
What to Watch Next
Goldman has a transition date. The bigger question is what the resignation signals about internal governance when reputational risk originates outside the firm’s four walls.
Key next steps that matter, and that reporters will chase:
- Who Goldman names as interim and permanent successor, and what mandate they are given.
- Whether any internal review details emerge about disclosures, vetting, and escalation decisions when Ruemmler joined in 2020.
- Whether additional Epstein-file releases or newly surfaced correspondence pull other senior figures into similar consequences, given DOJ’s description of the volume and breadth of the production.
