Disclosed Communications Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple exchanges between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as close contacts.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times improper – perspectives on public affairs and relationships.
“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, went on to say 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 Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a steadfast figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed 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 reply, Conservative lawmakers issued a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers kept up amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “role and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike 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 unnamed 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “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 carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared 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 later secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council 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 developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
