Disclosed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous communications between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, showing the pair served as confidants.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing personal – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and neglect 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 think if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”
During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was previously a key player in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Republican lawmakers published a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 restated his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he wrote. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined 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 career was advancing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
