Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
Numerous communications between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – perspectives on political matters and relationships.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 communication. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about female academics, went on to say in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was at one time a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers published a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers continued amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”
Summers affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
