Disclosed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes
Multiple communications between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing personal – and at times questionable – views on politics and interpersonal dynamics.
I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant 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 desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about female academics, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was once a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in jail 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 “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Republican lawmakers published a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
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 association” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 said. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein contributed 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 found Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally 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 that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began requesting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
