Uncovered Exchanges Depict Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
Multiple exchanges between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, showing the pair were confidants.
The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – views on political matters and personal connections.
I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions debate after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued 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 society.”
Summers was previously a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers released a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers kept up amicable contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place 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 investigate Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 restated his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking 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 got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
