Revealed Emails Depict Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of exchanges between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair acted as confidants.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times unseemly – opinions on politics and personal connections.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”
Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about women scholars, added in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was previously a key player in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the liberal commentariat. But questions have persisted about his association with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic lawmakers made public 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, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers continued friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably 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 overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.”
Summers reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he said. “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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then 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 asking Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
