Uncovered Communications Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
A series of exchanges between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on politics and relationships.
I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women in academia, continued in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was once a key player in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a committed presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last 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 association” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.
“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 affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he said. “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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately receive 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 non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
