What follows is just my opinion, but she really did. If you go to page 163 of the linked transcript, Ruemmler brings up Virginia Giuffre's "credibility" herself, and then presumes to try to interrogate the interrogator.

I don't know how apparent it is to people not versed in reading court transcripts, so I'm pasting it here with some formatting changes (hence the missing line numbers). The blacked out name is the person asking the questions on behalf of the committee, "Mr. Fishman" is Paul Fishman, one of Kathryn Ruemmler's lawyers, and Reummler is on the stand.

The page starts with Mr. [REDACTED] asking her about an email that seems to suggest that Ruemmler offered to appear as Epstein's defense counsel and this email was Epstein's "thanks but no thanks" back to her.

Ruemmler denies this in a response that is nonsensical and almost stuttering -- but then she and her lawyer push HARD to turn it in an entirely different direction, attacking the questioner for noting a misspelling in the record and then bringing up Virginia Giuffre's credibility herself, as though Ruemmler has information to offer:

16 Q All right. And we'll just note an earlier exhibit where Ghislaine Maxwell misspells almost certainly your name with a C.

18 Mr. Fishman. I'm sorry. Are you testifying?

19 Mr. [REDACTED]. Oh, no, I'm definitely not.

20 Mr. Fishman. I'm pretty curious.

21 Mr. [REDACTED]. We'll go to exhibit M if you'd like.

22 Mr. Fishman. You said he misspelled her name. That's what you said.

23 Ms. Ruemmler. If you are, I'm curious to know what your views are about the inherent credibility of Ms. Giuffre's allegation.

25 BY MR. [REDACTED].

1 Q So you still haven't actually been able to -- do you believe Ms. Giuffre was a survivor and a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, not --

3 A I'm sorry?

4 Q Do you believe that Virginia Giuffre was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell?

6 A I don't know.

7 Q Okay.

8 A If she says that she was, I don't have a reason to doubt that. However, there were allegations that she made that were, I believed based on my experience as a former prosecutor and as a defense counsel, that were of such a nature that they were -- they lacked inherent credibility.

11 Typically, when someone says, I was sex trafficked to someone, they say who, when, where, not multiple world leaders, multiple foreign presidents. So my state of mind at the time -- and again, I didn't investigate this case. You're sitting here talking to me. We've been going for however many hours we've been going. Okay? Have you -- have you sat down and spoken to the State prosecutor who was in charge of the Epstein investigation to ask what evidence she uncovered, to ask whether she interviewed Virginia Giuffre?

See how Ruemmler never actually answered the question, but worked together with her lawyer to get the questioning away from Ruemmler and her legal interactions with Epstein, ending with a demand that the questioner answer her own question?

There's a reason for that. If Ruemmler and her attorneys had allowed this line of questioning to continue, and established even the slightest hint that Ruemmler was involved in any of Epstein's legal problems as defense counsel, it would have blown her entire story permanently and without recovery, as her story has always been that she just didn't know. Didn't know what Epstein was doing, didn't know him personally well enough to have any idea, didn't look into his criminal record, didn't know it was more than one young girl who lied about her age. For being such an intelligent and highly-placed attorney, this woman is just an entire river of unknowing when it comes to Epstein.

But as Epstein's defense attorney in ANY of his cases, "I don't know" is simply not credible at all for any number of reasons, which is why the question was asked to begin with, IMO. Even if Epstein and Ruemmler had only discussed it, as the email suggests, it creates the possibility that Ruemmler knows far more than she has admitted to: defense attorneys make it their business to know as much as can be known, and the higher the stakes the deeper they dig. So she and her attorney had to get the questioner off that subject as quickly as possible and by any means, no matter how foul.

To the questioner's credit he did not take the bait, but did move on to different questions.

And for what it's worth, that email they were asking about includes the line where Epstein says, "might bring unhelpful criticism of the important role model that you have become for women" with no further explanation on his part, as if they both know exactly what he is talking about.