Revealed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
Numerous exchanges between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as confidants.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times improper – perspectives on politics and personal connections.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry 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 violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women in academia, added in the email 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 at one time a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a earlier 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 conviction”.
Democratic lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers issued a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers continued congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being rebuffed.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he commented. “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 conduct research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing 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 media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
