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Kathryn Ruemmler, a former top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and White House counsel under former President Barack Obama, admitted to House lawmakers that she joked with Jeffrey Epstein about his conviction of soliciting a minor for prostitution in a 2016 email exchange.
Ruemmler, who resigned from Goldman Sachs earlier this year after her extensive communications with the notorious sex fiend were released by the Justice Department, told the House Oversight Committee the joke – “Best massage ever, but not your kind of massage” – was made in “extraordinarily poor taste,” according to a transcript of her July 15 testimony released Wednesday.
“I certainly knew that he had pled guilty to two prostitution-related offenses and that those — that those involved — that conduct involved sexualized massages,” Ruemmler acknowledged during her grilling before the committee.
“So what I was making here was an offhanded joke that, certainly sitting here in 2026, is in extraordinarily poor taste, but it was a joke about his prior criminal history,” she continued.
Ruemmler, 55, explained that the “best massage ever” took place at The Peninsula in New York, after Epstein gifted her “a half spa day” at the five-star luxury hotel in Manhattan.
“I believe I went on a Saturday morning. And so I wrote back and said, you know, ‘Best massage ever,’ meaning I had a very nice massage at the spa. And I said ‘but not your kind of a massage.’ Yes. That was a joke to him about the fact that he had engaged in the crime of prostitution where the act, again, as I understood it, was that he had paid women to give him sexualized massages,” Ruemmler testified.
Epstein’s one-word response to the former Obama lawyer’s “joke” was: “Shame.”
“I wish I never dealt with the guy,” Ruemmler continued. “ It was a mistake to deal with him. I wish I — certainly wish I’d never emailed with him.
“And sitting here, you know, 10 years later, in light of everything we know now, this is a joke where I’m – I am using humor to basically, again, sort of call him out on the fact that he had this conviction. And it’s in poor taste.”
The spa day was one of several lavish gifts Ruemmler – who claims she was never paid by Epstein – acknowledged accepting from the convicted sex criminal.
Ruemmler testified that she also received gift cards to high-end stores, including Bergdorf Goodman, a Fendi coat and bag, a Hermes bag and an Apple Watch with a Hermes band.
“With respect to gifts, I didn’t ask for them, I didn’t need them, and I didn’t view them as particularly personal or consequential,” she told lawmakers. “I accepted them graciously, as I saw no reason not to, but the gifts weren’t important to me, and I declined to accept some of them. In any event, nothing he gave me caused me to deal with him any differently than I otherwise would have.”
Ruemmler, who dealt with Epstein through one of her private practice legal clients after leaving the White House, was also asked about why she referred to the disgraced financier as “sweetie,” “older brother” and “Uncle Jeffrey” in several emails.
The lawyer denied ever having a romantic relationship with Epstein and, again, claimed she was joking with him.
“So Mr. Epstein was — as I said a few minutes ago, he was extremely arrogant. He was a mansplainer. He was pushy. He was avuncular. And as a joke and, frankly, to poke fun of those qualities …. I think it was in response to, you know, again, something that he had sent me, you know, as a gift — that I, sort of, in a teasing way, referred to him, you know, as ‘Uncle Jeffrey,’” Ruemmler told the committee.
Ruemmler claimed she referred to Epstein as “sweetie” in a “patronizing way” after he suggested his criminal conduct was not as bad as disgraced Hollywood director and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein
“My tone was, ‘sweetie,’ like I was patting him on the head. ‘Hey, sweetie, your conduct involved abuse of power too.’ So it was far from an indication of affection,” she testified.
Ruemmler said she stopped communicating with Epstein after he was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019. Epstein hung himself in his Manhattan jail cell later that year while awaiting trial, according to authorities.
“All of these events – the arrest, the indictment, the suicide — were all quite shocking to me,” she told the panel. “And, again, this is someone who I knew and I had dealt with, and so it was quite surreal.”
She later added, “The idea that the Bureau of Prisons, you know, could have been so negligent in a core duty to have allowed him to commit suicide was shocking and appalling to me.”
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