Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
Numerous messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing intimate – and at times improper – opinions on politics and personal connections.
I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your admission 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 desertion it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”
During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about female academics, continued in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was previously a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a steadfast figure in the liberal commentariat. But questions have remained about his association with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his demise in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers released a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”
Summers affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “I’ve expressed this previously: my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a grave mistake.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated 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 admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
