EPSTEIN’S FEMINIST ARCH-DEFENDER
What Happened to the New York Times Fact Checkers?
Every writer who has ever published in the New York Times understands one thing: editors take seriously the paper’s role as the nation’s “paper of record.” It is a hoary and venerable title dating to 1913 when the Times became the first U.S. newspaper to publish a continuous searchable index of its subjects. What this means in practice is that IF a sweet turn of phrase or an exquisitely curated verb potentially shades a fact a hair away from what stringent potential inspection by its most fastidious potential reader - amateur ornithologist in Mongolia, autodidact geographer familiar with the precise GPS coordinates of Point Nemo, historian of the widget - might insist upon, editors will flag, query and invariably opt for a less specific or blander word or phrase.
Given that, we were shocked to see the weird oversights in a recent reported essay about lawyer Kathy Ruemmler, who Jeffrey Epstein had designated his ‘arch-feminist … great defender” and whose long and hearty relationship with the sex-offender has tanked a once-soaring career, from Obama’s White House Counsel to top lawyer at Goldman Sachs.
The writer Ankush Khardori is identified in the op ed byline as “a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor who specialized in white-collar crime.” Khardori wrote that he had spent three hours interviewing Ruemmler, listening to her side of the story.
Khardori set up his piece with a kind of disclaimer about “big law” - and how its practitioners work incredibly long hours under enormous pressure to bring in colossal sums of money from titans. “Outside of the media spotlight (and off the record), most white-collar lawyers I know have been unwilling to condemn” Ruemmler, Khardori wrote. “That is not because they are sympathetic to Mr. Epstein or friendly with Ms. Ruemmler, but because doing business with Mr. Epstein, and people like him, was business as usual for the top ranks of the legal profession. It most likely remains so to this day.”
To put that plainly, they serve Rich criminals all day long. Butthat disclaimer doesn’t absolve the fact checkers of what would seem a duty to clarify some of the statements Khardori and Ruemmler make.
A few examples:
The article implies that Ruemmler was just like other members of the Biglaw clan who must shake a dirty hand now and then to make their bonuses. “They reciprocated not necessarily because they liked [Epstein], but because it was their business to know people like him.” That line would leave readers thinking Ruemmler might not have liked Epstein but remained in contact with him for business purposes.
The emails tell a different story. Beginning in fall 2014, the two were in near constant contact, with a clear rapport.
The article leaves out that fact. The whoppers go unchallenged. For instance, she states: “If I had seen or heard anything to suggest that Epstein was harming women or girls, I would have taken action to stop it.”
That quote is presented without comment, despite the fact that elsewhere in the story she makes clear she knew about his Palm Beach conviction for exactly that harm.
The timeline is also verifiably off. Khardori writes that Ruemmler first interacted with Epstein after she left the White House in summer 2014, and just before she returned to private practice when she “received a phone message from a man she had never met” who “wanted to set her up with Bill Gates to oversee legal work for a new investment fund.” No Biglaw attorney would turn that down. So far so good. She told Khardori that Larry Summers had sent Epstein to her.
A simple word search of her name in the DOJ dump of emails and scheduling messages in the DOJ’s Epstein files indicates otherwise.
Epstein told Summers that Leon Black’s attorney Brad Karp (coincidentally the first Biglaw leader to obsequiously bend the knee to Trump’s illegal federal courthouse ban threats and pro bono demands) connected him with Ruemmler.
And half a year before she left the Obama White House, in December 2013, emails indicate Epstein had tentative meetings set up with Ruemmler and his own attorney Reid Weingarten in Washington.
The relationship did ramp up in the summer of 2014, with at least five scheduled lunches at Epstein’s New York mansion, with the likes of Bill Gates and lawyers for the Rothschild family. Epstein bragged that she would meet the following people at his house: Peter Thiel, Ariane de Rothschild, Ehud Barak, Norwegian politician Thorbjørn Jagland, Dr. Eva Dubin. Ruemmler replied to that with a joke: “you are such a good matchmaker. Are you going to find me a husband next?”
Perhaps most embarrassing is that Ruemmler told Khardori she was assured of the propriety of her relationship with Epstein by the fact that two of the most odiously partisan and morally egregious attorneys in America worked for him as well. Khardori explained: That Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr were part of his 2008 legal team only seemed like further proof of his relative innocence — surely, they wouldn’t have chosen to work for someone they knew had committed the crimes Mr. Epstein was accused of.
Seriously?
It is understandable that Khardori, doing reputation rehab, left out some unsavory elements to Ruemmler’s public service career also evident in the Epstein files: receiving a CIA medal apparently for work running interference with the Senate Judiciary Committee Abu Ghraib torture investigation; her involvement, via Epstein, with the Saudi government’s efforts to crush or avoid a U.S. law allowing 9/11 survivors to sue the desert monarchy; and feeding intelligence about the Mueller investigation to Steve Bannon and Epstein, while representing convicted sex offender George Nader.
That said, we are not interested in crucifying Kathy. In fact we feel sorry for her. A Gen X female super-lawyer, she worked hard and rose in the ranks of powerful men - only to be brought low. Many of the men she sat across from in boardrooms or lunches or dinners in Washington, New York, Paris, London and Riyadh we now know to be Epstein class predators or enablers, men who consider women fit to be traded like farm animals. But she is also not a victim. And the extent of the misleading omissions in the piece deserve attention because as it stands it serves as a passive assist to the larger Epstein coverup.
Ankush Khardori---gross, dishonest, self-serving--- doesn't begin to describe it---this "sane-washing" by the New York Times is what we've come to expect. Always still demoralizing. Thank you, Nina, for keeping on top of this. At least there's this one truth "they serve Rich criminals all day long" that goes for the New York Times, as well. And, while I recognize the inequity if Ruemmler's getting the boot---while the men go scott free---I do not feel sorry for her. No one should. She knew and she did nothing. Period.
I no longer assume anything is accurate or truthful. When I see a gaggle of “journalists” at Pedophile’s pressers, not one asks a follow-up question, nor do they defend each other against the felon’s abuse and insults.