Uncovered Exchanges Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
Multiple communications between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair were trusted allies.
The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging private – and at times questionable – views on political matters and relationships.
I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and desertion 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 feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment controversy after a previously 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 discriminatory comments about women in academia, continued in the message 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 population.”
Summers was at one time a leading light in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have lingered about his association with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive 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 report, a agent for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers continued congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein responded 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 restated 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 appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts 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 came out, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
