President Barack Obama spent eight years pretending to do war with Wall Street and K Street, while really, he was totally in bed with Big Business, big banks, and lobbyists. He also enjoys an unjustified reputation as running a scandal-free administration.
The falsehood of both Obama’s self-image and media image is laid bare in the person of Kathy Ruemmler, a revolving-door lawyer in the headlines for her connection to the late pedophile and pimp Jeffrey Epstein.
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Ruemmler passed through the revolving door many times, from private practice to the Clinton administration to the Obama administration, to Goldman Sachs before ending up in multiple meetings with Epstein, who died in jail before facing trial in 2019.
Epstein’s schedules have recently been disclosed to reporters, and the Wall Street Journal reported that Ruemmler “had dozens of meetings with Epstein in the years after her White House service and before she became a top lawyer at Goldman Sachs.”
Beyond their meetings, Epstein reportedly “planned for her to join a 2015 trip to Paris and a 2017 visit to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.”
Ruemmler’s current employer, law giant Latham & Watkins, said that Epstein was offering to direct new clients to Ruemmler. Ruemmler now says, “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.”
It’s fitting, but also not all that impressive, that one would regret seeking professional help from Epstein now that he is convicted, dead, notorious, and synonymous with elite perfidy.
Yet Ruemmler still has some explaining to do. Her meetings with Epstein in the 2010s came many years after Epstein had first pleaded guilty to procuring an underage prostitute.
Also begging an explanation was Ruemmler’s appearance at his 2019 arraignment. Ruemmler wasn’t representing Epstein or any party in the federal case against him. Instead, she “was at Epstein’s court appearance that day in his support,” the Daily Beast reported in 2020.
Ruemmler’s career story is a run through scandal, abuse, and the steady erosion of norms that marked the 2010s.
Ruemmler went from the Clinton White House to being a federal prosecutor. Then she served the private sector and then entered the Obama Justice Department before becoming White House counsel in 2011.
Ruemmler reportedly advised Obama in 2011 that he had the authority to start a war with Syria even without congressional authority, despite the clear letter of the law that the president needs congressional authorization to launch an offensive war.
In 2013, when Harry Reid abolished the filibuster for federal judicial nominees (and in the process effectively abolished all Senate rules), it was Ruemmler who masterminded the campaign from the White House.
She was also a champion of opacity over transparency. She is reported to have led the charge on the Obama administration’s campaign to dismantle the Freedom of Information Act and maximize presidential secrecy.
In 2020, Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs as global head of regulatory affairs. That is, she monetized the connections to government and the insider knowledge she had gained in public service and put them to work for a private interest.
Ruemmler wasn’t the first White House counsel to leave the Obama White House and land at Goldman. Greg Craig, Obama’s first counsel, cashed out to Goldman in 2010.
This didn’t surprise anyone who paid attention to the 2008 election reality rather than the Obama rhetoric: Goldman, which was getting bailed out at the time, was the source of more campaign money than any other company, and its executives and employees gave four times as much to Obama as to John McCain. Obama placed a former Goldman lobbyist as chief of staff at the Treasury Department, and his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was formerly on Goldman’s payroll.
This all reflects on the character of the Obama administration.
“Kathy has become one of my most trusted advisers over the past few years,” Obama said in 2014. “I deeply value her smarts, her judgment, and her wit — but most importantly, her uncanny ability to see around the corners that nobody else anticipates.”
Her smarts and her wit are not in question, but when Obama praises the “judgment” of someone who had a business friendship with Jeffrey Epstein throughout the 2010s doesn’t reflect a great deal of judgment on his part.
And it goes both ways.
Ruemmler has not held a job in the Biden administration, but in late 2019, she attended fundraisers for Biden’s primary race (eventually, she gave more than $20,000 to his 2020 election efforts). At the 2019 primary, she said, “There is no one who has the strength and the quality of character, no one like Joe Biden."
Again, this is the judgment of a woman who became professional friends with Jeffrey Epstein.