The Epstein Scandal Reveals the Dark Side of Bipartisanship

The hands forever reaching across the aisle too often do so in the service of monstrous corruption.

Among the most staggering revelations in the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein document release are the details that have recently emerged about the treacly relationship between Epstein and attorney Kathryn Ruemmler. The emails between Epstein and Ruemmler range from the inexplicable to the inexcusable, with Ruemmler routinely referring to Epstein as “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey,” and even advising him on “how to respond to tough questions about his sex crimes,” as The New York Times reported.

Naturally, the most notable thing about their relationship is precisely who Ruemmler was. While hardly a household name, Ruemmler was widely considered one of the titans of the Democratic legal establishment. Serving most recently as Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer (until she finally stepped down last week), Ruemmler originally made her name in a different role: White House counsel for President Barack Obama, whom she served from 2011 to 2014. Ruemmler was viewed as such an important member of Obama’s inner circle that she nearly served as his attorney general—and by extension, the most powerful legal professional in both the Democratic establishment and the country writ large.

So much for all that. Rather than overseeing the Department of Justice, Ruemmler is now a case study in how Epstein’s network spanned all partisan divides, snaking across the most prominent parts of the American political spectrum. Indeed, it’s almost breathtaking to consider just how wide Epstein’s network truly was: It somehow brought everyone from Ruemmler, Bill Clinton, and Noam Chomsky to MAGA and Republican stalwarts like Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. As Anand Giridharadas, one of the most trenchant analysts of this kind of cross-partisan elite networking, said earlier this month, Epstein created a network that was “coast to coast, industry to industry, right to left—as far left as you can go, as far right as you can go.” All of it created, as Giridharadas said, a “diversity [that] masked a deeper solidarity” among all of these Epstein-connected elites. As academic Seva Gunitsky added, it paints a picture of a “borderless elite [who] profit from weak institutions and enjoy getting paid.”

Giridharadas and Gunitsky have this precisely right. The files, and Ruemmler’s central place therein, have revealed that the bipartisanship so revered by the chattering class is fake and fraudulent. It’s all a masquerade, a play-act of elite Americans pushing nominally different policy........

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