Uncovered Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes
Numerous communications between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and relationships.
I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of 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 feel if u murder your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women in academia, continued in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was at one time a leading light in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a stalwart voice in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic lawmakers released 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, GOP lawmakers issued a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 restated 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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began requesting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
