“Do you believe that Virginia Giuffre was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell?” the House oversight committee asked Ruemmler, who served as the White House counsel in the Obama administration, during her interview with the panel earlier this month part of its investigation into Epstein.
“I don’t know,” she responded, according to a transcript released on Wednesday.
Ruemmler went on to add: “If she says that she was, I don’t have a reason to doubt that. However, there were allegations that she made that were, I believed based on my experience as a former prosecutor and as a defense counsel, that were of such a nature that they were – they lacked inherent credibility.
“Typically, when someone says, I was sex trafficked to someone, they say who, when, where, not multiple world leaders, multiple foreign presidents,” she said.
Her remarks were condemned by Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, who said in a statement that it as “reprehensible” to “attempt to cast doubt on Virginia, whose bravery was the reason so many other survivors stepped forward, resulting in more than 50 people having to step down from their positions of power”.
They said that “the only person who lacks credibility is Kathy Ruemmler”.
Direct link to Ruemmler’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on July 15, 2026:
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Ruemmler-Final-Transcript_Redact-7.28.26.pdf
5 Comments
floofloof@lemmy.ca · 31 pts · 13d
And what do they typically say when they have been sex trafficked to multiple world leaders and presidents?
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 13d
I would imagine something very close to what Virginia Giuffre said when she was trafficked to multiple world leaders and foreign presidents.
The circular logic with these people is fucking insane.
ButtermilkBiscuit@feddit.nl · 10 pts · 13d
"The people she accused are too important!! They're above the law! Don't you know who pays the bribes around here shut your mouth." ~ History footnote: Kathy Ruemmler - pedophile protector.
nkat2112@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 13d
With that, she destroyed her own reputation.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12d
What follows is just my opinion, but she really did. If you go to page 163 of the linked transcript, Ruemmler brings up Virginia Giuffre's "credibility" herself, and then presumes to try to interrogate the interrogator.
I don't know how apparent it is to people not versed in reading court transcripts, so I'm pasting it here with some formatting changes (hence the missing line numbers). The blacked out name is the person asking the questions on behalf of the committee, "Mr. Fishman" is Paul Fishman, one of Kathryn Ruemmler's lawyers, and Reummler is on the stand.
The page starts with Mr. [REDACTED] asking her about an email that seems to suggest that Ruemmler offered to appear as Epstein's defense counsel and this email was Epstein's "thanks but no thanks" back to her.
Ruemmler denies this in a response that is nonsensical and almost stuttering -- but then she and her lawyer push HARD to turn it in an entirely different direction, attacking the questioner for noting a misspelling in the record and then bringing up Virginia Giuffre's credibility herself, as though Ruemmler has information to offer:
See how Ruemmler never actually answered the question, but worked together with her lawyer to get the questioning away from Ruemmler and her legal interactions with Epstein, ending with a demand that the questioner answer her own question?
There's a reason for that. If Ruemmler and her attorneys had allowed this line of questioning to continue, and established even the slightest hint that Ruemmler was involved in any of Epstein's legal problems as defense counsel, it would have blown her entire story permanently and without recovery, as her story has always been that she just didn't know. Didn't know what Epstein was doing, didn't know him personally well enough to have any idea, didn't look into his criminal record, didn't know it was more than one young girl who lied about her age. For being such an intelligent and highly-placed attorney, this woman is just an entire river of unknowing when it comes to Epstein.
But as Epstein's defense attorney in ANY of his cases, "I don't know" is simply not credible at all for any number of reasons, which is why the question was asked to begin with, IMO. Even if Epstein and Ruemmler had only discussed it, as the email suggests, it creates the possibility that Ruemmler knows far more than she has admitted to: defense attorneys make it their business to know as much as can be known, and the higher the stakes the deeper they dig. So she and her attorney had to get the questioner off that subject as quickly as possible and by any means, no matter how foul.
To the questioner's credit he did not take the bait, but did move on to different questions.
And for what it's worth, that email they were asking about includes the line where Epstein says, "might bring unhelpful criticism of the important role model that you have become for women" with no further explanation on his part, as if they both know exactly what he is talking about.