When you hear that somebody’s estate is working hard to keep hundreds of emails secret, your thoughts might drift to legal theatrics, old-school power struggles in the plumbing of scandalous intrigue. That is precisely what is happening right now around Epstein’s legacy. The estate alleges that there are close to three-hundred email exchanges between Epstein and Kathryn Ruemmler — who now serves as Goldman Sachs’ chief legal officer — and they are seeking to prevent them from being made available, citing attorney-client privilege.
The emails, which date as far back as 2014 and continue all the way up to relatively soon before Epstein’s arrest last year on federal sex-trafficking charges, were revealed in a tranche of more than 2,000 pages of documents that a federal court ordered unsealed last week. They include civil lawsuits brought by women who accused him of sexual abuse and discussions about criminal allegations, according to legal filings.
To many survivors and their lawyers, these messages might be critical. They could provide insights about how Epstein dealt with accusations prior to his arrest — including possible legal strategies, internal discussions and the depth of the support network he used to facilitate his activities. Classifying the conversations as privileged is a way for the estate to keep all that under wraps. Critics contend that this privilege claim is far too sweeping — essentially shielding material to which the public and victims are clearly entitled.
The scandal goes deeper because Ruemmler is not your ordinary lawyer. Before working at Goldman Sachs, she was a prominent white-collar defense attorney who was noted briefly in an early draft of Epstein’s will as a possible executor of the estate. While she was replaced prior to Epstein’s death, this number of emails and their legal implications raises serious questions regarding the nature of her legal relationship with Epstein.
On the one hand, the estate argues that client-attorney privileges do not expire with Epstein’s death. That’s a fundamental legal principle: privileged communications don’t automatically become public simply because the speaker dies. On the other hand, there are many who view this as a maneuver to keep secrets and potential evidence from being made available publicly — in particular in continuing lawsuits and investigations against Epstein’s circle.
What is at stake here is so much more than paperwork. It’s about accountability. Making those emails public could shed light on how Mr. Epstein managed lawsuits against him, who counseled him, and the steps he took when the going got rough. It may also unlock insight into the powerful network of individuals implicated — directly or otherwise — and how legal protections possibly made it possible for him carry on for years.
But from a legal perspective alone, the estate has the upper hand. Attorney-client privilege is one of the most sacred protections there is in law.” Hard to make the request once you’ve made it, unless there’s really good reasons. But for as long as Ruemmler — or her lawyers — claim that this correspondence was part of a confidential attorney-client relationship, courts may well feel obliged to follow the rules of confidentiality.
Today, neither Ruemmler nor Goldman Sachs has released details of the extent to which they may be related. Lawyers for Epstein’s accusers say the privilege claim is “overbroad,” as many of these email threads appear to go far beyond mere legal advice — delving into logistics, personal contacts and perhaps coordination that contributed to broader wrongdoing.
In short: we are at a crossroads between long-standing legal shields and the public’s thirst for transparency in one of the most high-profile sex-trafficking cases in recent memory. Whether the public — or the courts — will see what’s in those 277 emails, however, remains to be seen.
