Revealed Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous messages between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.
These exchanges, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times questionable – perspectives on politics and interpersonal dynamics.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, continued in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was once a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers released a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final 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 association” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.
“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. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “As previously stated, my connection to Jeffrey Epstein represented a serious lapse in judgment.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein donated 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 “lacked the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
