Disclosed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
Multiple messages between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair were close contacts.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times questionable – opinions on political matters and relationships.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about women scholars, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was at one time a key player in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his association with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with 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 affirmed his sorrow 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
