Disclosed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple communications between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as close contacts.
These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and relationships.
I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of 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 kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making sexist comments about female academics, went on to say in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was at one time a leading light in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a steadfast presence in the progressive media. But questions have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad exploitation operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers published a larger batch 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 taking place only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump posted 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 prominent Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 determined Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.