In the first major corporate casualty of the Jeffrey Epstein document dump, Brad Karp, the high-powered chairman of elite law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has resigned after emails revealed he privately advised the convicted sex offender on legal strategy and asked him for a personal favor.
Karp announced his resignation on Wednesday, stating that “recent reporting has created a distraction” not in the firm’s best interest. The “reporting” refers to dozens of email exchanges with Epstein included in the latest Department of Justice file release.
The correspondence is damning. In 2016, an email seemingly from Karp asked Epstein if he could help Karp’s son secure a role on a Woody Allen film production. More critically, a March 2019 email—just four months before Epstein’s arrest—from a sender named Brad Karp stated, “The draft motion is in great shape,” in an apparent discussion about protecting Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal. Paul Weiss has insisted it “never represented Epstein,” but the emails suggest Karp provided informal, personal counsel.
A Firm in Crisis and a Pattern of Elite Access
Karp’s fall is a seismic event in the legal world. He led Paul Weiss since 2008 and was a major political fundraiser. The firm now faces a profound crisis of reputation, caught between its chairman’s private dealings and its public denial of formal representation.
The resignation highlights the insidious nature of Epstein’s network. Karp is the first top-tier professional services leader to fall, but the files detail similar links between Epstein and other “rich and powerful figures” across finance, academia, and politics. Karp claimed his interactions were limited to “two group dinners” and a “small number of social interactions by email, all of which he regrets.”
A Trump Deal and an Unraveling Legacy
The scandal is compounded by Karp’s recent political maneuvering. Less than a year ago, he negotiated a deal with President Donald Trump in which Paul Weiss would provide $40 million in free legal services to the White House in exchange for Trump rescinding an executive order against the firm.
Brad Karp will remain at Paul Weiss as a lawyer, but his legacy is now inextricably linked to the files of Jeffrey Epstein. His resignation signals that the posthumous reckoning for Epstein’s enablers has moved from social disgrace to professional ruin, and the power brokers who advised him are no longer safe.
