The Lawyers Who Helped: How the Chairman of Paul Weiss and Obama's White House Counsel Served Jeffrey Epstein

There is a particular kind of complicity that belongs to lawyers. It is not the complicity of the person who commits the crime, or the person who covers it up. It is the complicity of the professional who lends their expertise, their reputation, and their institutional authority to someone they know to be dangerous, and who does it anyway because the relationship is valuable.

The Epstein files reveal two lawyers who embody this pattern more completely than anyone else in the documents: Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and Kathryn Ruemmler, the former White House Counsel who became Goldman Sachs' Chief Legal Officer. Both resigned from their positions in early 2026. Both left behind a documentary trail that raises fundamental questions about the legal profession's role in enabling Epstein.

Brad Karp: The Chairman

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is not just any law firm. It is one of the five most prestigious firms in the United States. Its alumni include federal judges, SEC commissioners, and attorneys general. Its clients include the largest corporations and financial institutions in the world. And its chairman, from 2008 until his resignation on February 5, 2026, was Brad Karp.

Karp's relationship with Epstein is documented across multiple EFTA files. The emails show a pattern of regular contact, personal familiarity, and professional collaboration that extended years after Epstein's 2008 conviction.

EFTA00451813 captures a revealing exchange. On May 18, 2017, Lesley Groff, Epstein's longtime executive assistant, emailed Karp to arrange a meeting with "Jeffrey." Karp replied: "I can join for about an hour. I need to introduce someone at a dinner in midtown at 6:45. Would that work for Jeffrey?" The casual tone, the first-name basis, the willingness to rearrange his evening schedule: this is not how the chairman of a top-five law firm speaks about a client. This is how he speaks about a friend.

EFTA00819399 shows Karp responding to Epstein directly, making plans that blend professional and social settings. The email, dated September 1, 2016, includes a message from Epstein (sent from [email protected]) asking Karp to raise a financial matter with Leon Black during a golf outing: "i know you are scheduled to play golf with leon. I d appreciat it if you brougjht up the fact that he has not paid one penny this year thx." Karp replied: "It was already on my agenda!"

The chairman of Paul Weiss was running financial errands for Jeffrey Epstein on the golf course.

But the most damning detail surfaced in reporting from early 2026. Karp reportedly reviewed a draft court filing prepared for Epstein in 2019 and wrote: "The draft motion is in great shape. It is overwhelmingly persuasive." The filing in question was related to Epstein's legal defense. Karp, according to reports, also asked Epstein for help getting his son a job on a Woody Allen movie, another request that, in retrospect, carries a dark irony given Allen's own history of allegations.

Karp resigned from Paul Weiss on February 5, 2026. The firm issued a statement thanking him for his "decades of distinguished service" but did not address the Epstein relationship. Karp has not spoken publicly since his resignation.

Kathryn Ruemmler: The White House Counsel

If Karp's involvement is disturbing because of his institutional position, Ruemmler's is disturbing because of what it reveals about proximity to power.

Kathryn Ruemmler served as White House Counsel to President Obama from 2011 to 2014. In that role, she was the president's chief legal adviser, responsible for judicial nominations, executive orders, and the legal architecture of the administration. She was considered one of the most influential lawyers in Washington. After leaving the White House, she became Chief Legal Officer at Goldman Sachs, one of the most powerful positions in corporate law.

Her relationship with Epstein, as documented in the EFTA files, began before the White House and deepened after she left.

EFTA00439732 shows Ruemmler coordinating a visit to Epstein's Manhattan home in November 2016. "I have a meeting down on Wall Street that ends at 4 p.m., so I could come up to Jeffrey's after that," she wrote. The casualness is striking. This is two years after she left the White House, eight years after Epstein's conviction, and Ruemmler is fitting a social call at a convicted sex offender's home into her afternoon schedule.

Multiple other EFTA documents, including EFTA00439774, EFTA00442319, EFTA00451756, and EFTA00451780, show continued email traffic between Ruemmler and Epstein's office, spanning years of contact.

But the emails are only part of the story. According to reporting that emerged in January and February 2026, Ruemmler's relationship with Epstein included the following:

She called Epstein an "older brother." She received luxury handbags and a fur coat from him, gifts that came after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. She was named as the successor trustee of Epstein's $577 million estate, meaning that if the primary trustees, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, were unable to serve, Ruemmler would have taken control of the fortune of a man who died facing federal sex trafficking charges. And phone records show that Epstein called Ruemmler from the Metropolitan Correctional Center on July 6, 2019, the day he was arrested. Among the first people a sex trafficker called from jail was the former White House Counsel.

Ruemmler resigned from Goldman Sachs on February 12, 2026. She has been called to testify before the House Oversight Committee on May 12.

The Inner Circle: Indyke and Kahn

Karp and Ruemmler are the most prominent lawyers in the Epstein files, but they are not the ones who ran the legal machinery day to day. That role belonged to Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn.

Indyke served as Epstein's personal attorney and was named co-executor of his estate. EFTA documents show him involved in virtually every significant legal and financial decision Epstein made. EFTA00822704 and EFTA00829461 are among hundreds of emails that pass through Indyke's hands.

Kahn served alongside Indyke as co-executor and was similarly embedded in Epstein's operations. Together, they managed the legal infrastructure that supported Epstein's activities: the trusts, the shell companies, the property transfers, the tax strategies.

Both Indyke and Kahn have faced lawsuits from Epstein's victims alleging that they knew about and facilitated Epstein's abuse. Both have denied the allegations. Neither has been criminally charged.

The Pattern

What connects Karp, Ruemmler, Indyke, and Kahn is not just their legal skills. It is their willingness to continue working with Epstein after his 2008 conviction. That conviction was not ambiguous. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution. He was a registered sex offender. The basic facts of his criminal conduct were public.

And yet the chairman of Paul Weiss reviewed his court filings. The former White House Counsel visited his home and accepted his gifts. His personal attorneys continued managing his affairs and were rewarded with control of his estate.

The legal profession has rules about this. Model Rule 1.16 permits a lawyer to withdraw from representation if "the client persists in a course of action involving the lawyer's services that the lawyer reasonably believes is criminal or fraudulent." Rule 8.4 prohibits conduct "prejudicial to the administration of justice." These are not obscure provisions. They are taught in the first year of law school.

None of these lawyers withdrew. None of them reported concerns. None of them walked away, until the documents forced them to.

What It Means for the Profession

The Epstein legal network is not a story about rogue attorneys operating in the shadows. Paul Weiss is not a shadow firm. Goldman Sachs is not a shadow bank. The White House Counsel's office is not a shadow agency. These are the most visible, most respected, most powerful legal institutions in America.

That is precisely the point. Epstein did not need lawyers who would break the law for him. He needed lawyers whose reputations would make his activities appear legitimate. A meeting with the chairman of Paul Weiss is not suspicious. A relationship with the former White House Counsel is not alarming. The prestige of the lawyers served as camouflage for the client.

This is the contribution that elite lawyers made to Epstein's operation. They did not draft the abuse. They did not recruit the victims. They provided something arguably more valuable: the appearance of normalcy. When the chairman of a top-five firm takes your calls and reviews your motions and plays golf with your business partners, you are not a pariah. You are a client.

Brad Karp and Kathryn Ruemmler have both resigned. Neither has been charged with a crime. But the EFTA documents ensure that the legal profession's role in the Epstein network is now part of the permanent record. Law students will study these emails. Ethics professors will teach these cases. And the question they will ask is the same one that hangs over every revelation in the Epstein files: how did so many people who knew better decide that it did not matter?