5 Takeaways From Brad Karp’s Emails With Jeffrey Epstein
Karp began dealing with Epstein to serve a key client. But at some point, things went off the rails—badly.
This story is longer than a usual OJ post, but I think you’ll find it interesting. If you don’t have time to read it now, save it for later and read it over the three-day weekend for Presidents’ Day. Speaking of which, a quick programming note: because of the Presidents’ Day holiday weekend, my weekly legal news roundup, Judicial Notice, will most likely appear on Monday, February 16, instead of Sunday, February 15.
Last night, Kathryn Ruemmler resigned as chief legal officer and general counsel of Goldman Sachs, some two weeks after the latest Jeffrey Epstein files revealed the depth of her ties to the late financier and sex offender. My main reaction: I was surprised it took this long. (And note that her resignation isn’t effective immediately; as reported by The Wall Street Journal, she’s not leaving her post until June 30.)
I’ll have more to say about Ruemmler later. In the meantime, I’d like to return to a story that I regard as more interesting: Brad Karp stepping down as chairman of Paul Weiss, the elite law firm that he had led since 2008. I’ve written about this at great length, and I won’t rehash my prior coverage (with which this post assumes familiarity).
To report on Karp’s departure as chair, I spent many hours on the Epstein files website set up by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), reviewing the documents that came up when I searched the term “karp.” This was not a pleasant experience—aside from how it immersed me in the seamy world of Jeffrey Epstein. The DOJ website, which has a terrible user interface, constantly crashed—forcing me to restart my search, then click through many pages I’d already seen, to return to where I had been. And doing all that doc review took me back to the worst parts of being a junior associate in Biglaw. (There’s now a more user-friendly archive of the Epstein files called Jmail.)1
The files shed light on several subjects that should interest to Original Jurisdiction readers. But before turning to substance, I have some disclaimers and disclosures.
First, I’m not an entirely objective observer. Like many people in the legal world, I know and like Brad Karp. We’re both extroverts who go to plenty of events, and whenever our paths have crossed, we’ve always had pleasant interactions.
And at least until now—when he and his successor as chair, Scott Barshay, seem to have gone into media lockdown—Karp has made himself very accessible to journalists. So I’ve also spoken to Karp in a journalistic capacity several times over the years, and our conversations have left me with positive feelings toward him—because he’s an extremely charming, even charismatic, individual.2 It’s entirely possible that these feelings are coloring my coverage; feel free to apply a “discount factor” to anything you see in this post that strikes you as too sympathetic toward Karp.
Second, here’s a quick explanation of my methodology. I went onto the DOJ Epstein Library website, typed in the search term “karp,” and proceeded to review the responsive emails. Not all of the 1,700-plus documents relate to Brad Karp—for example, some involve Robert Karp, at the time a managing director at Wells Fargo—but it’s fair to say that most of them involve Brad Karp.
The number 1,700 vastly overstates the Epstein-Karp relationship. If you heard that two people exchanged 1,700 emails, you might think that they were besties. But as anyone who has done document review well knows, there are duplicate files—many, many duplicates. In addition, the vast majority of the Epstein-Karp emails are not substantive. Many are simply scheduling emails, trying to set times for calls—and considering Karp’s crazy schedule, there are a ton of those.
Because of this proliferation of duplicative and non-substantive emails, I didn’t review every last document. The DOJ website provides a preview of the first few lines of each file, and based on these previews, I skipped documents that looked to me like ones I’d already seen. But it’s entirely possible that this caused me to miss relevant communications. If you’d like to bring a file to my attention that I might have missed, please email me (davidlat@substack.com) or text me (917-397-2751; texts only, since this is a Google Voice line that I don’t use for calls).
Third and finally, Jeffrey Epstein is terrible, and I incorporate by reference pretty much all the awful things said about him, everywhere. I don’t think it’s very productive for me to chronicle and condemn his wrongdoing; that has already been done, quite ably, by others. But nothing in this post should be construed as defending Epstein or having associated with Epstein. Like so many others, Kathy Ruemmler and Brad Karp have expressed regret for their Epstein interactions. And it goes without saying that, with the benefit of hindsight, they should never have associated with him in the first place.
Now, on to the main event: five takeaways from the Epstein-Karp correspondence. These points are based not only on my review of the Karp-related Epstein files, but also reflect information I received from current and former lawyers at Paul Weiss. These sources were not willing to speak on the record, given the sensitivity of the issues and the firm’s desire to reduce its media coverage (and to better protect their anonymity, I often don’t distinguish between information from them versus information from the files).
1. Brad Karp is a workaholic.
During his 18 years as chair, Karp, 66, somehow managed to maintain a more-than-full-time practice as a lawyer serving clients. Unlike most Biglaw leaders, he didn’t reduce his client work to make room for his management work—on which he also spent thousands of hours each year. Word on the street is that while he was chair, he spent well over 2,000 hours a year, and probably closer to 3,000 hours a year, just on client service—on top of thousands of hours on management responsibilities and business development efforts.3
And after reading the Epstein-Karp emails, I believe it. The emails confirm Karp’s busyness—and offer an interesting window into what it’s like to run a major law firm while also maintaining an extremely active practice as a litigator. Karp frequently had to reschedule or decline calls or meetings with Epstein, and he would often explain why. Here are some examples of Karp’s scheduling conflicts:
a telephonic court argument
an in-person court argument
a mediation
a meeting with the DOJ
a presentation to regulators
a board meeting
an offsite meeting for Citigroup (one of the firm’s largest clients)
a presentation to the Citi audit committee
a meeting of NFL owners (the NFL is another marquee client)
How did Karp manage to juggle all of his responsibilities? Many people, especially the working parents among us, wonder if there’s some sort of life hack for being more productive. Based on his emails with Epstein, Brad Karp’s approach appears to be brute force: just work more (and sleep less).
But it comes at a cost. On one occasion, after Epstein emailed Karp to check in (because he hadn’t heard from him for several days), Karp wrote that he had been “working 20 hour days/nights” and was now “sick as a dog,” with a 104 fever. In other messages, Karp alluded to various medical tests and surgical procedures. And last year, Karp experienced a heart attack. At least in terms of his health, it might be a good thing for Karp that he’s no longer chair.
2. Karp’s dealings with Epstein were driven by one major factor: keeping Leon Black happy, largely for the benefit of Karp’s corporate partners.
Why was Brad Karp dealing with Jeffrey Epstein in the first place? As Paul Weiss explained in a statement, “Paul Weiss was retained by Leon Black, then the CEO of the firm’s longtime client Apollo, to negotiate a series of fee disputes with Jeffrey Epstein that spanned several years. The firm was adverse to Epstein, and at no point did Paul Weiss or Brad Karp ever represent him.”
Apollo first became a litigation client of Paul Weiss in 2008, through Karp—who obtained an excellent result for the private-equity giant in the messy Huntsman/Hexion litigation. Pleased with PW’s work, Apollo started sending transactional matters to the firm—which ramped up after the 2011 arrival at PW of a group of partners from O’Melveny & Myers, who already did deals for Apollo.
Apollo grew to become Paul Weiss’s biggest client—especially on the corporate side, where Apollo generated so much work that PW basically created a firm within the firm to service it. As chair of the firm, Brad Karp had a mission, driven primarily by his partners on the transactional side: keep Apollo—and therefore Leon Black, its co-founder and then-CEO—happy at all costs.
Although Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein had a deep relationship, in which Epstein provided Black with tax- and estate-planning services, they sometimes had a difficult time dealing with each other—especially on the matter of fees. In fact, when the two men ultimately parted ways in 2018, it was because of a fee dispute.
The Epstein-Karp emails show that in 2013, Black asked Karp to handle all fee negotiations with Epstein. While it might seem like overkill to hire a (very expensive) Biglaw partner to handle such a matter, it makes more sense when you understand the enormous sums involved: an investigation by Dechert, commissioned by Apollo, found that Black paid Epstein a total of $158 million over the years.
Karp has always had excellent interpersonal skills—“an asset in winning clients and rising to the upper echelons of the legal world,” according to The Wall Street Journal—and he applied these skills to his relationship with Epstein. Based on my read of their correspondence, it seems that Karp’s thinking was that being on good personal terms with Epstein would benefit Black in the Black-Epstein fee negotiation. So Karp went on a “charm offensive” vis-à-vis Epstein.
As it turned out, Jeffrey Epstein also had people skills—which helped him worm in his way into elite circles, despite being a total fraudster—and he apparently had the same idea. Epstein thought that he’d fare better in the fee negotiation if he had a friendly relationship with Karp. So the result was a minuet of sorts, with each man trying to get in the other’s good graces, in order to get a better outcome in the negotiations—Karp on behalf of his firm’s largest client, and Epstein on behalf of... Epstein.
3. Karp and Epstein had an instrumental relationship, and it was a lopsided one—with Epstein as the more eager party.
By now, we’re all familiar with some of the worst—i.e., the warmest—emails between Karp and Epstein. Some examples:
Karp thanked Epstein for having him over to dinner—which Karp called “an evening I’ll never forget,” as well as a “once in a lifetime event”—and then told Epstein, after Epstein sent a “you’re welcome” email, “You’re amazing.”
Karp asked for Epstein’s help in obtaining a job for his son, filmmaker David Karp, on a film production by Woody Allen—a longtime Epstein friend—and expressed gratitude when Epstein delivered.
Members of the Karp family attended screenings of Woody Allen films, which Epstein made possible, and Brad Karp thanked him.
But focusing on these emails, a small sliver of the 1,700-plus messages, doesn’t paint an accurate picture of the complete Epstein-Karp relationship. On the whole, it was an imbalanced one, with Epstein showing greater enthusiasm:
Epstein emailed Karp far more than Karp emailed Epstein—few of their email chains were actually started by Karp—and it was generally Karp who would drop the ball on a chain, often prompting Epstein to email Karp something like “???”"
Although Karp accepted a handful of social invitations from Epstein, attending two dinners and a few movie screenings, he declined many more invitations than he accepted, generally citing work-related conflicts (see point #1, supra).
On some occasions, Karp claimed sickness—in fact, so often that Epstein sent him advice on how to use Vicks VapoRub and Mucinex to ease his discomfort. (As someone who just got over a long cold, I endorse both products; I wouldn’t believe most things said by Epstein, but a stopped clock is right twice a day.)
Karp was invited to Epstein’s island—but Karp never took him up on that, and I came across no emails indicating that Karp visited (as far as I know, this isn’t a Howard Lutnick situation).
Epstein tried on multiple occasions to introduce Karp to Steve Bannon, but it never happened. Indeed, the emails show that Epstein repeatedly invited Karp to breakfasts and dinners with various VIPs, but Karp almost always begged off.
Epstein texted Bannon, “Need to work magic to get brad Karp admitted to augusta golf club.” But I found no communications from Karp requesting such help, from either Epstein or Bannon. (It wouldn’t surprise me if Epstein did this unsolicited; he was often trying to get powerful people to owe him favors.)
4. Karp is a talented litigator—but capable of being a “fixer,” if necessary.
In 2018, I covered a panel on Biglaw business development—moderated by Brad Karp, actually. The panelists stressed the importance of client service, with former Hughes Hubbard chair Candace Beinecke declaring that “I’ll help my clients with anything”—e.g., finding a certain medical specialist for a general counsel, or assisting a CEO’s kid with getting into a selective school. When an associate complained that handling such requests wasn’t offering legal advice, Beinecke said, from the partner’s side of the desk, “This is why I’m here—and how you could get here.”4
Based on the window into Karp’s work life offered by his emails with Epstein, the sense I have is that the vast majority of his work for clients is conventional legal work—appearing in court, dealing with regulators, and the like. And Karp excels at that work, with clients describing him to Chambers as “a star in commercial litigation.”
But I suspect that Karp agrees with Beinecke: he’s willing to help his clients with anything. So there’s a small percentage of Karp’s work—if I had to guess, maybe five to ten percent—that’s not straight-up legal work. Call it strategic advising, crisis management, or—if you’ve seen the movie Michael Clayton, or the show Scandal— “fixer” work.
In Michael Clayton, George Clooney, playing the title character, is a self-described “fixer.” A lawyer for a corporate law firm, he works behind the scenes to “fix” problems—some with legal aspects, some without—for the wealthy and powerful. The firm touts him to clients as “a miracle worker,” but Clayton calls himself “a janitor”—because he quietly cleans up messes, no muss, no fuss.
Fixer work might feel unsavory because it often involves dealing with embarrassing personal problems. For example, after billionaire Robert Kraft and former Citi executive John Havens were charged with soliciting prostitution down in Florida, Epstein and Karp worked on finding them defense counsel. In the end, Kraft secured representation from two top trial lawyers, Bill Burck and Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who succeeded in getting key evidence suppressed—and the charges against Kraft and Havens were ultimately dropped.5
Most relevant for present purposes, Karp and Epstein teamed up to do fixer work for their shared client, Leon Black. In 2015, they corresponded over how to deal with a woman who had an affair with Leon Black, accused him of abuse, and—in the words of one of Black’s lawyers, Susan Estrich—“attempt[ed] to blackmail him.” As described in Law.com and Business Insider, this involved Karp and Epstein communicating about private investigators from Nardello & Co., who followed and surveilled the woman (reportedly former Russian model Guzel Ganieva). The two men also discussed whether to report the woman to law enforcement.
[UPDATE (2/13/2026, 9:53 a.m.): The paragraph above was edited to reflect that Karp and Epstein communicated about the investigators from Nardello, but only Karp communicated with them. When it came to the work done in 2015 for Leon Black, Nardello dealt with Brad Karp and Lorin Reisner, co-chair of PW’s white-collar practice, but not Epstein. (Nardello did have other contact with Epstein over the years, as discussed in the footnote.6)]
[UPDATE (2/14/2026, 11:39 a.m.): As reported by The Financial Times, Karp called then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in April 2021 to discuss the possibility of an investigation into Ganieva for allegedly attempting to extort Black.]
Getting involved with surveilling a client’s mistress is not, admittedly, a great look. When you read the Epstein-Karp emails over dealing with the Guzel Ganieva problem, referred to in the emails as “GG,” you might feel… kinda gross. But to quote the famous line uttered by Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) in The Godfather: Part II, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
Remember: Leon Black, worth an estimated $13 billion, was the co-founder and CEO of Apollo, Paul Weiss’s largest client—and an especially important client on the transactional side, because of the torrent of deal work it generated. The PW partnership, especially the corporate partners, knew that they needed to keep Black happy. But as transactional lawyers, they didn’t have the expertise to handle a messy matter involving allegations of sexual abuse (against Black) and blackmail (against Ganieva)—which could have led to criminal litigation, against either Black or Ganieva, and did in fact result in civil litigation.
So it fell to Brad Karp—a seasoned litigator, with expertise in crisis management—to make Leon Black’s problem go away. And in doing this, he worked with Epstein—who knew about the “GG” problem as well, as a close confidant of Black, and who had experience in dealing with… problems of this nature.
In my head, I like to imagine Brad Karp getting off a call with the private investigators who were trailing Ganieva, calling up the head of the corporate practice at Paul Weiss, and uttering the signature line of Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), the great fixer from the show Scandal: “It’s handled.”7
5. At some point, Karp lost track of who his client was, as well as the goal of the representation.
As discussed above, Brad Karp began interacting with Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of a major client, and it often seemed (in the emails) that Karp was trying to avoid or minimize his contact with Epstein. Contrast Karp with Kathy Ruemmler—who did not appear to have a client-based reason for interacting with Epstein, and who had much more extensive, enthusiastic interactions with the man she called “Uncle Jeffrey.”8
At the same time, I think it’s fair to say—and I suspect that Karp would agree—that in trying to maintain a warm relationship with Epstein, for purposes of the Leon Black fee negotiations, Karp went too far—way, way too far. Recall that Karp’s client was Leon Black—who was actually adverse to Epstein. Despite that, Karp sometimes seemed to treat Epstein as a client too.
In one email to Epstein, dated March 9, 2016, Karp wrote, “I sought reconsideration from Mike Corbat and Jamie Forese, but in the end they deferred to compliance. I wish I had different news to report.” It’s not clear what this is in reference to, but at the time, Corbat and Forese were high-ranking executives at Citigroup. If I had to guess, Citi decided to cut off Epstein as a client, perhaps out of “Know Your Customer” concerns—and Epstein turned to Karp, a trusted lawyer to Citi, for help.
In another email, dated March 2, 2019, Karp told Epstein that he reached out to contacts at The New York Times. The Times had just published a staff editorial condemning Epstein’s ridiculously lenient plea agreement, and Epstein was trying to get the paper to publish a letter to the editor defending the deal. So he asked for Karp’s help in flagging the letter for editors at The Times. In the end, The Times did publish the letter, written by four of Epstein’s current and former lawyers (Ken Starr, Martin Weinberg, Jack Goldberger, and Lilly Ann Sanchez).
There’s no evidence in the emails that Karp actually did reach out to The Times or Citi on Epstein’s behalf, even if you can imagine such evidence—e.g., Karp forwarding to Epstein the emails as sent to The Times or Citi. According to my sources, Karp tells colleagues who ask that he never reached out to contacts at Citi or The Times—but simply claimed he did to Epstein, in order to placate him.
Regardless, it was completely unnecessary for Karp to have done these things, if he actually did them, or to tell Epstein he did these things, if he didn’t do them. Regarding The Times, Karp could simply have told Epstein that he didn’t know anyone at the paper. As for Citi, Karp could have said that as outside counsel to Citi, he wouldn’t be comfortable trying to seek reversal of a decision by compliance. Or he could have politely reminded Epstein that he (Karp) represents Leon Black, not Epstein—so Epstein should ask his own attorneys to reach out to Citi.
And it’s not as if Epstein didn’t know other lawyers. First, Epstein was already good friends with Kathy Ruemmler, then a partner at Latham & Watkins—and more than happy to help Epstein out with legal issues.9
Second, Epstein had been represented years earlier by Susman Godfrey—one of the nation’s top trial firms—in business litigation. In response to my inquiry about its representation of Epstein, which I don’t believe has been previously reported, the firm sent me this statement:
From 2009 to 2012, Susman Godfrey represented Jeffrey Epstein in two commercial matters—one against Bear Stearns involving the collapse of a hedge fund, and another in which Epstein claimed a preferential redemption right in shares of a hedge fund. Both cases settled. As reflected in the emails recently released by the Department of Justice, these were purely business disputes. Susman Godfrey’s representation of Epstein was limited in scope and limited in time and involved solely the referenced business matters.
This brings us to what might be the worst Karp-Epstein email of all: the March 2019 missive. Two Epstein victims tried to reopen and modify his slap-on-the-wrist plea deal, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to charge Epstein with a litany of serious sex offenses if he pleaded guilty to two (relatively minor) state charges. The victims argued that the agreement failed to comply with the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), since they weren’t notified of the deal (as required by the CVRA).
Epstein shared with Karp a draft of a court filing, prepared by Epstein’s lawyers, arguing against reformation of the plea deal. Karp responded as follows:
The draft motion is in great shape. It’s overwhelmingly persuasive. Truly.
Wish there was a different case name than [United States v.] Fokker, but we can’t have everything. In all seriousness, I don’t see a credible counter to our arguments. The case law is totally stacked in favor of our position.
Even the equities are—I particularly liked the argument that the “victims” lied in wait and sat on their rights for their strategic advantage, knowing you were in prison, before they came forward.
The amici letter is well done as well. I’m wondering if it makes sense to attach to the amici request a close-to-final draft of the legal analysis, which is more persuasive than the summary in the amici letter. I do think it may be difficult to persuade amici to wade into this issue because of the controversy.
This is terrible. Where to begin? What’s the worst part?
Commenting on the draft in the first place? In March 2019? By this point in time, Leon Black himself was no longer communicating with Epstein, having cut off ties in 2018, and Epstein’s predations had become widely publicized.
Making a tasteless joke about the case name Fokker?
Referring to Epstein’s points—remember, Karp is supposed to be representing Leon Black, who’s adverse to Epstein—as “our arguments”?
Claiming that “the equities” are “stacked in favor” of Jeffrey Epstein?
Putting the word “victims” in scare quotes?
And what’s so regrettable about all of this, from Brad Karp’s perspective, is that it was one big, unforced error. He could have sent a response like one of the following:
“Thanks, Jeffrey. But I should probably refrain from commenting, since I’m not your lawyer.”
“Apologies, just slammed—won’t have the time to look at this.”
“You’re represented by some excellent lawyers, so I’m going to defer to them. You’re in good hands with Roy.” (The motion was signed by Roy Black—who was, in the words of David Oscar Markus, “the GOAT of criminal defense lawyers.”)10
“Looks good.”
Of these four possibilities, “Looks good” is obviously the worst. But let’s imagine Karp had sent a perfunctory “Looks good,” instead of what he actually sent. Might he still be chair of Paul Weiss today?
In fairness to Karp, I haven’t practiced law in 20 years, so my negative opinions and second guessing might not be worth much. As I previously wrote, after I criticized Paul Weiss’s deal with the Trump administration, Karp is “the proverbial ‘man in the arena’; it’s easy for folks like me, typing away in my pajamas, to sit on the sidelines and carp about Karp.” And, of course, hindsight is 20/20.
Still, there’s probably a lesson to be learned here. Good lawyers go the extra mile for clients—but great lawyers know where to stop.
As with Wednesday’s post, Paul Weiss’s Firm Culture Fell Victim To The Vampire Rule, there’s additional “inside baseball” in the footnotes, which are available to paid subscribers. While the vast majority of OJ’s content is free, I do believe in providing some extra value to my paid subscribers, who make it possible for me to do my work on a full-time basis. If you’re a paid subscriber, I thank you for your support.
