Uncovered Communications Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple exchanges between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as close contacts.
These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing personal – and at times improper – views on political matters and personal connections.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, went on to say in the email to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was previously a prominent figure in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But doubts have remained about his association with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad exploitation operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a representative for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Republican lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein replied 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 restated his regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “As previously stated, my connection to Jeffrey Epstein represented a serious lapse in judgment.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested 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 that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House NEC 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 developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
