Revealed Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
Numerous exchanges between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair acted as confidants.
The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing private – and at times questionable – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u kill 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} figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on 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 grappling with an admissions discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was once a leading light in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and association” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein replied 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 reiterated 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed 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 economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed 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 gifts to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
