Revealed Communications Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
A series of exchanges between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair were confidants.
Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by violence and neglect it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL 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 ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a stalwart voice in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply 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, Conservative lawmakers issued a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed 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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the educational background 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 admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve 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-sex-trafficking organizations.
