Kathy Ruemmler, the former Obama White House Counsel, told a House panel that she believed that descriptions of abuse by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre “lacked inherent credibility” – drawing a fierce rebuke from Giuffre’s family, who accused the lawyer of trying to downplay her own ties to Epstein.
The statement by Ruemmler to the House Oversight Committee became public Wednesday when the panel released a transcript of its closed-door interview with Ruemmler about her ties to Epstein. Ruemmler, who most recently was working in a top legal position for Goldman Sachs, saidshe now regretted interacting with the late sex offenderand believed it to be a mistake.
But when asked specifically whether she believed Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser whodied by suicide, was a victim of Epstein and Maxwell, Ruemmler answered, “I don’t know.”
She elaborated: “If she says that she was, I don’t have a reason to doubt that. However, there were allegations that she made that were, I believed based on my experience as a former prosecutor and as a defense counsel, that were of such a nature that they were ‑‑ they lacked inherent credibility.”
Responding to the statement, Sky and Amanda Roberts, Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, said in a statement to CNN: “The only person who lacks credibility is Kathy Ruemmler, who is trying to get people to believe she didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein was actively engaged in sex trafficking.”
“To attempt to cast doubt on Virginia, whose bravery was the reason so many other survivors stepped forward, resulting in more than 50 people from having to step down from their positions of power, is reprehensible,” the statement said. “She should be ashamed of herself.”
Jami Schlicher, a public relations representative for Ruemmler, disputed that Ruemmler was “broadly dismissing Virginia Giuffre’s allegations” in an email before Giuffre’s family members had issued their statement.
“That is simply not what happened,” Schlicher wrote in an email. “Ms. Ruemmler was responding to a specific discussion about specific allegations. She was expressing skepticism regarding particular claims that had not been substantiated, not every allegation Ms. Giuffre ever made.”
In 2019, Giuffre publicly alleged Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, when she was 17 years old. The former prince has repeatedly denied the allegations.
“Typically, when someone says, ‘I was sex trafficked to someone,’ they say who, when, where, not multiple world leaders, multiple foreign presidents,” said Ruemmler. She added that since she didn’t investigate the case, she would have asked the chief investigator about what evidence they uncovered or whether they interviewed Giuffre.
Ruemmlerannounced in February she would resignas the chief legal officer from Goldman Sachs after stories published detailing her ties to Epstein were published, including fromCNN’s KFile.She was supposed to leave the firm by the end of June, but Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomonasked her to stayon as an adviser until her successor was named. Goldman Sachs declined to comment to CNN.
Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law said in the statement: “Kathy Ruemmler enriched herself while girls and young women suffered and had their lives destroyed because she enabled their abuser.”
Ruemmler was also asked by investigators about an email from September 2015 in which shewrote, “I want to think about whether there are any counterclaims that could be brought against VR,” with VR referring to Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
At the time, Giuffre had sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation for saying that her abuse allegations against Maxwell and Epstein were “obvious lies.”
When pressed if she wanted to bring any counterclaims against Giuffre, Ruemmler said she had no memory of the email but that she was “sort of in a generic way trying to show that I’m being somewhat responsive when [Epstein’s ] asking my views. And, again, that was a common way that I would respond to him.”
