Uncovered Communications Depict Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of exchanges between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair acted as close contacts.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”
Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, went on to say in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad child sex trafficking operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the found guilty 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 requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being rebuffed.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”
Summers affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” 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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed 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.
By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began requesting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
