Uncovered Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of exchanges between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair were close contacts.
These exchanges, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing intimate – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and relationships.
I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”
Back then, 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 stepped down amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held 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 one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein replied 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 regret in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began asking 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 met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.