Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, has announced her resignation in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”.

Ruemmler said in a statement on Thursday that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026”.

Up until her resignation, Ruemmler repeatedly tried to distance herself from the emails and other correspondence and had been defiant that she would not resign from Goldman’s top legal post, which she had held since 2020.

While Ruemmler has called Epstein a “monster” in recent statements, she had a much different relationship with him before he was arrested a second time for sex crimes in 2019 and later killed himself in a Manhattan jail; Ruemmler called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey” in emails and said she adored him.

In a statement before her resignation, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said Ruemmler “regrets ever knowing him.”

During her time in private practice after she left the White House in 2014, Ruemmler received several expensive gifts from Epstein, including luxury handbags and a fur coat. The gifts were given after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender.

“So lovely and thoughtful! Thank you to Uncle Jeffrey!!!” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein in 2018.

Historically, Wall Street frowns on gift-giving between clients and bankers or Wall Street lawyers, particularly high-end gifts that could pose a conflict of interest. Goldman Sachs requires its employees to get pre-approval before receiving gifts from clients or giving them, according to the company’s code of conduct, partly in order to not run afoul of anti-bribery laws.

Ruemmler was part of the leadership at Goldman Sachs, among the top executive officers of the Wall Street firm. As late as December, Goldman CEO David Solomon described Ruemmler as an “excellent lawyer” and said she had his full faith and backing.

In a statement on Thursday, Solomon said: “As one of the most accomplished professionals in her field, Kathy has also been a mentor and friend to many of our people, and she will be missed. I accepted her resignation, and I respect her decision.”

Epstein also called Ruemmler’s cell phone when he was arrested on 6 July 2019, among other calls he made that night, according to two documents that cited notes from law enforcement officials.

A separate note by the Federal Bureau of Investigation cited Epstein as saying on the same day: “Is this about sex trafficking. Is this about underage.”

The author of the FBI document, who was not named, said Epstein also made utterances including: “Oh this is bad, this is pretty bad.”

Ruemmler had a large number of communications with Epstein from 2014 to 2019, even after the disgraced financier’s 2008 guilty plea for procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution, the documents showed.

These communications included advising Epstein on how to respond to a media inquiry in 2019 concerning the alleged special legal treatment he received because of his connections, the emails show.

“I was a defense attorney when I dealt with Jeffrey Epstein,” Ruemmler said in a statement to Reuters on 3 February.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting