Disclosed Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous communications between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair were confidants.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times unseemly – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”
At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, added in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed 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 the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a steadfast figure in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein responded 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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left 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 got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
