The Jeffrey Epstein files have revealed a secret affair between Barack Obama‘s former top lawyer and an attorney who worked for Jeffrey Epstein.
Kathryn Ruemmler’s relationship with Reid Weingarten was exposed by a blistering email sent to Ruemmler by Weingarten’s wife Cheryl Gould, formerly a top producer at NBC News.
Gould warned Ruemmler to ‘stay away’ from her husband in June 2015. Ruemmler forwarded the soul-baring email to Epstein, expressing surprise that the wife of an attorney the predator he employed would contact her in such a manner.
Gould, who stepped down from her role at NBC the year prior, appeared to break up with Ruemmler on Weingarten’s behalf, claiming he no longer wanted to ‘proceed through life as a [dishonorable] man’.
The email was sent after the two women spoke briefly on the phone, a year after Ruemmler stood down as then-President Barack Obama’s White House counsel.
Weingarten had an ‘addiction’ to Ruemmler and ‘asked for my help to break it’, Gould wrote, urging Ruemmler to ‘suck up your [hurt] feelings and send me a sincere apology’.
‘I certainly do hope that this time, [you] understand the finality of your “relationship” with my husband. I hope now you can find true happiness without having a relationship with someone else’s husband,’ Gould said.
She blasted the lawyer and her husband for the ‘damage you [have] both caused to our marriage and family’, especially their son who now ‘sees the father figure he has admired his whole life as a weak man who has lied and cheated to his mother’.
Cheryl Gould (pictured) sent a scathing message to Kathryn Ruemmler in June 2015 revealing that she knew about her romantic relationship with her husband Reid Weingarten
Gould accused Ruemmler (pictured in 2001) of being ‘swept away’ by her ‘feelings of some kind of deformed mutation of love’ and implied she has no respect for women who sleep with married men
Gould also claimed ‘many people’ thought she and Ruemmler would make ‘great friends’.
She then dismissed any possibility of such a friendship because she was the ‘kind of woman who loves the sisterhood, not women who sleep with and fall [in] love with someone else’s husband or significant other’.
In forwarding Gould’s email to her, Ruemmler complained she found it ‘dispositive’ that Weingarten ‘would permit this message to stand’. Weingarten was one of Epstein’s personal lawyers at the time.
Ruemmler is now the top female executive at Goldman Sachs investment bank, with her job there under increasing pressure as new emails display the depths of her friendship with Epstein.
When the email from Gould arrived, she was a partner at elite law firm Latham & Watkins.
‘Reid has confessed his [secrets] and lies. He has told me that his relationship with you has caused him [misery]. Stay away before you manage to destroy him completely. You have no [dignity] or pride,’ Gould wrote.
Two days later, Gould, who was the first female executive producer of NBC Nightly News, sent another message condemning the affair and doubling down on her claim that the couple were through.
The lengthy email details that Weingarten tried to break up with Ruemmler on a phone call, but the lawyer hastily hung up.
Sources say Ruemmler and Weingarten (seen in 2013) had been involved in a yearslong romantic relationship
‘Reid has told me about his addiction to you before and has asked for my help to break it. He finally found the power to do it because of the [depths] of his misery and unwillingness to proceed through life as a [dishonorable] man,’ Gould wrote.
‘I hope you can find a similarly true friend who can do the same for you. I wish you well, believe it or not. Had you not jumped off the [phone] as quickly as you did (which I perfectly well understand) he would have [told] you this.’
She further accused Ruemmler of being ‘swept away’ by her ‘feelings of some kind of deformed mutation of love’ and implied she has no respect for women who sleep with married men.
The journalist further noted that Ruemmler did not destroy their marriage and, despite the ‘mess’ she and Weingarten caused, ‘our love is very [strong]’.
She claimed that her marriage would prevail and concluded: ‘It must be hard for you [to] understand how deep our relationship is since he has not acted that way in his weak behavior with you.
‘In fact, I think he felt he could act out with [you], act as though his relationship with you was intense and real, precisely [because] he knew I would be there for him. He is a great man with great [weaknesses].
‘That doesn’t make him a monster and I don’t think you are either.’
Ruemmler and Weingarten had been involved in a yearslong romantic relationship at the time, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
It is unclear why Ruemmler forwarded the message on to Epstein. But she and the pedophile had seemingly known each other since around the time she left the Obama administration in 2014.
Ruemmler appeared in previous Epstein files releases and once referred to the financier as being like an ‘older brother’.
Gould sent an initial email to Ruemmler on June 13, 2015, ordering her to ‘stay away’ from Weingarten
Two days later, the NBC executive sent another message condemning the affair and doubling down on her claim that the couple were through
Ruemmler, who appears to have forwarded Gould’s email on to Jeffrey Epstein, claimed she found it ‘dispositive’ that Weingarten ‘would permit this message to stand’
Ruemmler has said in the past that she regrets having known Epstein and reiterated that she has never legally represented him.
Latham and Watkins, for whom Ruemmler headed their white-collar crime practice, have previously stated that Epstein was never a client.
Weingarten, however, was one of the lawyers who represented Epstein in his 2019 criminal case.
The Daily Mail has contacted Gould, Weingarten and Ruemmler for comment.
