Goldman's Ex-Top Lawyer Calls Epstein 'Masterful Liar' as Three Capitol Hill Hearings Converge on Scandal

Three Capitol Hill hearings on Wednesday thrust the Jeffrey Epstein scandal back into the spotlight, with Goldman Sachs' former top lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler facing the House Oversight Committee behind closed doors. Simultaneously, Senate confirmation hearings for two of President Donald Trump's nominees, Todd Blanche for attorney general and Jay Clayton for director of national intelligence, were dominated by questions about the Justice Department's mishandling of Epstein victim files.

Ruemmler's closed-door testimony

Ruemmler, 55, told the committee that during the six years she knew Epstein she never observed "any evidence suggesting that he was abusing women or girls" and had come to realise he "was a masterful liar."

First, I did not see any evidence of ongoing criminal conduct or misconduct of any kind by Epstein during the time I dealt with him.

The former White House counsel said if she had seen such evidence she would have immediately reported him to law enforcement. She acknowledged, however, that the relationship, which began in summer 2014 after she left the Obama administration to join Latham & Watkins, involved offering Epstein advice, accepting gifts, and exchanging irreverent emails that later surfaced in a Justice Department document release last fall.

I can see now that he used me and other respectable people to legitimise his standing, and I know now that he often exaggerated his relationship with me to others.

Emails, 'sweetie' and a $25 million job

Emails released by the Justice Department showed Ruemmler had socialised and joked with Epstein, called him "sweetie," and advised him on handling past allegations of soliciting sex from a minor, the charge behind his 2008 Florida guilty plea and federal non-prosecution agreement. Ruemmler told lawmakers the correspondence was "taken out of context or do not mean" what they appear to suggest, according to The Wall Street Journal. She said she dealt with Epstein because they shared a mutual client and saw no criminal conduct. Following public outcry after the emails surfaced, Ruemmler resigned from Goldman Sachs in February, giving up a position that paid $25 million annually.

Twin Senate panels target redaction failures

Across the Capitol, Democrats on two Senate committees pressed Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton about sloppy redactions that exposed explicit photos and personal information of Epstein's victims. The documents, part of a court-ordered release triggered by a new law, had reignited criticism of the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein case and its fallout for the Trump administration. Both nominees faced sharp questioning over what lawmakers described as a failure to protect victim privacy.

The committee's wider probe

The House Oversight Committee has spent months investigating how Epstein's political and business connections may have helped him escape accountability for running an alleged sex trafficking ring. Ruemmler was the latest high-profile figure to appear voluntarily, following former president Bill Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The panel is calling more than a dozen people from Epstein's orbit to answer questions. Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019 and died in jail later that year, a death ruled a suicide. Judges and lawmakers say that over decades he abused, trafficked and molested scores of girls, many of whom have since come forward.