Kathy Ruemmler said Epstein accuser’s assertions ‘lacked inherent credibility’ under questioning about her own ties

By Em Steck, Annie Grayer, CNN

(CNN) — Kathy Ruemmler, the former Obama White House Counsel, told a House panel that she believed the descriptions of abuse by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre “lacked inherent credibility,” as she was grilled by investigators about her own ties to Epstein, a transcript shows.

The House Oversight Committee released a transcript of its closed-door interview with Ruemmler about her ties to Epstein on Wednesday. Ruemmler, who most recently was working in a top legal position for Goldman Sachs, said she now regretted interacting with the late sex offender and believed it to be a mistake.

But when asked specifically whether she believed Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who died by suicide, was a victim of Epstein and Maxwell, Ruemmler answered, “I don’t know.”

She elaborated: “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.”

In 2019, Giuffre publicly alleged Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, when she was 17 years old. The former prince has repeatedly denied the allegations.

“Typically, when someone says, ‘I was sex trafficked to someone,’ they say who, when, where, not multiple world leaders, multiple foreign presidents,” said Ruemmler. She added that since she didn’t investigate the case, she would have asked the chief investigator about what evidence they uncovered or whether they interviewed Giuffre.

CNN has reached out to Ruemmler and Giuffre’s family for comment. Ruemmler announced in February she would resign as the chief legal officer from Goldman Sachs after stories published detailing her ties to Epstein were published, including from CNN’s KFile. She was supposed to leave the firm by the end of June, but Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon asked her to stay on as an adviser until her successor was named.

Ruemmler was also asked by investigators about an email from September 2015 in which she wrote, “I want to think about whether there are any counterclaims that could be brought against VR,” with VR referring to Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

At the time, Giuffre had sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation for saying that her abuse allegations against Maxwell and Epstein were “obvious lies.”

When pressed if she wanted to bring any counterclaims against Giuffre, Ruemmler said she had no memory of the email but that she was “sort of in a generic way trying to show that I’m being somewhat responsive when [Epstein’s ] asking my views. And, again, that was a common way that I would respond to him.”

“I didn’t have any direct involvement in any of this,” Ruemmler added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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CNN’s MJ Lee contributed to this report.