Epstein Explored Law Careers, Leadership With Ruemmler, Karp (1)

The Justice Department’s latest release of material related to its investigations into Jeffrey Epstein offers a new glimpse into the disgraced financier’s connections to Big Law and some of its top attorneys.

Officials on Jan. 30 released some 3 million pages of material, including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The documents reveal that Epstein was involved in discussions about lawyers at large firms.

Here are examples of references in the Epstein documents to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Latham & Watkins; Hogan Lovells; Kirkland & Ellis; and litigator Beth Wilkinson.

Latham Leadership

Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp and Epstein in 2018 mulled whether the top job at Latham & Watkins would be a good move for Kathryn Ruemmler.

Epstein emailed Karp on March 20 of that year with a link to a story about Latham chair Bill Voge stepping down over a sexting scandal.

Karp replied, “What this what you couldn’t tell me? I really liked Bill Voge.”

A day later, Epstein asked Karp, “should ruemmler be chairman of the firm?”

Ruemmler at the time was Epstein’s legal adviser. She was the global co-chair of Latham’s white collar defense and investigations practice.

Karp advised Epstein that Ruemmler taking the top spot at Latham would be “perceived very positively by the marketplace.” But there were also downsides to the role, he said.

“Kathy taking this on would be a real mitzvah for Latham, but at a huge personal/professional cost to Kathy,” Karp told Epstein.

Ultimately, Ruemmler stayed put in her job at Latham until she left the firm in 2020 to join Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The following year, she took her on her current role as the investment bank’s top lawyer.

Capital markets and M&A lawyer Richard Trobman replaced Voge as Latham’s chair in 2019. He still holds that position.

Latham, Karp, and Ruemmler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hogan Hiring

While Ruemmler was still at Latham, Epstein helped her with other possible Big Law career moves.

Ruemmler on Nov. 14, 2015, forwarded to Epstein an email containing messages she had exchanged about a possible job at Hogan Lovells. She told Epstein that the messages represented the “state of play.”

In that forwarded exchange, which took place on Nov. 13, then-Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal invited Ruemmler “to come in and chat w my folks? You should.”

She wrote back: “I don’t think I should come in and=talk to folks unless I have a better sense of what the economics would look=like.” She added that she would only leave Latham for a “sufficiently different deal and different opportunity.”

“So, I w=uldn’t want to come in and talk to folks with its attendant leak risk etc. i= at the end of the day it isn’t worth it to switch firms,” Ruemmler said.

Brad Karp

More than a month after receiving Ruemmler’s forwarded exchange, Epstein emailed Paul Weiss’ Karp on Dec. 29, 2015. He told Karp, “if you are really interested in Ruemmler we should t=lk sooner rather than later.”

Karp replied, “I’m certain we are.”

Epstein then relayed intelligence to Karp on Ruemmler’s negotiations with Hogan Lovells. He told Karp that Hogan Lovells’ then CEO, Steve Immelt, “made a pitch re the future - all major litigation will be global in scope. International regulators and regulation. He said he would build a dept around her. . blah blah.”

Ruemmler didn’t take a job at Hogan Lovells—or at Paul Weiss. She stayed at Latham before joining Goldman Sachs.

Hogan Lovells, Karp, and Ruemmler did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Kirkland Fees

Kirkland & Ellis represented Epstein on his controversial 2008 plea deal in a Florida sex abuse and trafficking case. Criticism of the deal ultimately led to the resignation a decade later of former Kirkland litigator-turned-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta.

Kirkland lawyers also handled media disputes involving Epstein and litigation he filed over his investments in a now-defunct hedge fund. Epstein paid more than $3.1 million to Kirkland between 2008 and 2011, according to billing summaries and invoices sent from the firm to Epstein.

Jay Lefkowitz, a Kirkland litigation partner who advised Epstein and is now an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, didn’t respond to a request for comment about his work. Nor did Kirkland, which also provided legal services to Epstein through other lawyers, including ex-partner and former US Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, who died in 2022.

Starr was among a group of lawyers that signed a letter to the editor of the New York Times in 2019, defending the terms of Epstein’s 2008 plea agreement. Epstein’s emails show that Karp reviewed the letter and sent it to four members of the newspaper’s editorial team that he knew on March 2, 2019. It was published two days later.

The “draft looked strong,” Karp wrote in an email to Epstein.

Wilkinson ‘Fear’

Epstein suggested litigator Beth Wilkinson as an option for counsel to former Arizona State University professor Lawrence Krauss, who was facing sexual misconduct allegations.

“Beth Wilkinson represented Kavanaugh. Her name will strike some fear,” Epstein said to Krauss in an October 2018 correspondence.

Wilkinson had been a lawyer at Karp’s Paul Weiss until she left in 2016 to co-found a boutique litigation firm now known as Wilkinson Stekloff. She represented then Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh when he faced sexual misconduct allegations during his confirmation process in 2018.

There is no indication Krauss ever took up Epstein on the suggestion about Wilkinson. Krauss did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wilkinson declined to comment.

According to a Krauss statement referenced in the New York Times on Nov. 21, he said he “sought out advice from essentially everyone I knew” when he was accused of sexual misconduct—allegations which he has maintained are false.

“None of the communications with Epstein relate in any way to the horrendous crimes he was accused of in 2019,” Krauss said in his statement to the Times. He said Epstein “was fascinated by science, and they attended scientific meetings together.”