Revealed Emails Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
Numerous exchanges between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, showing the pair acted as close contacts.
Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging intimate – and at times unseemly – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”
At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women in academia, continued 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 the populace.”
Summers was at one time a leading light in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have lingered about his association with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a earlier set 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 conviction”.
Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.
“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 affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications 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 pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable 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 got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.