Uncovered Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous exchanges between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair acted as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing intimate – and at times questionable – perspectives on public affairs and personal connections.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet flirted with 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 wrestling with an acceptance controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making sexist comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was at one time a key player in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a stalwart figure in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad child sex trafficking operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers released a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers continued congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein replied 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 remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 gave 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 determined Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed 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.
By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually win 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 philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
