Revealed Communications Illustrate Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes
A series of exchanges between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair were close contacts.
The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – views on politics and personal connections.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”
Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, added in the email to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a steadfast figure in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other influential 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, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rebuffed.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he said. “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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council 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 pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
