Revealed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of exchanges between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair were close contacts.
The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times improper – views on political matters and personal connections.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and neglect 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 believe if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, added in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was at one time a leading light in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers stated that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers released a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers continued friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable 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 is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein replied 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 affirmed his regret 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would later secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
