Revealed Exchanges Show Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple communications between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair were confidants.
Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging intimate – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and personal connections.
I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by beating and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”
At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance debate after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women in academia, went on to say in the correspondence 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 key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a steadfast voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and connection” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote 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 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 donated 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 “lacked the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified 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 later win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body 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 working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
