Revealed Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes
A series of communications between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as close contacts.
Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing private – and at times improper – perspectives on politics and relationships.
I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was at one time a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a steadfast figure in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a representative for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers released a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers continued congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council 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 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-exploitation organizations.
