Revealed Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous exchanges between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing intimate – and at times improper – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence 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} determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, added in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was previously a leading light in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a stalwart figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his association with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers issued a much bigger tranche 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 occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s contempt 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 unnamed woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets 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 conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then 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 requesting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
