Revealed Communications Show Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of exchanges between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair served as close contacts.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and relationships.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about female academics, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned 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 ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the liberal commentariat. But questions have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad child sex trafficking operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a previous batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers released a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and connection” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rebuffed.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets 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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for non-profit 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 met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
