Revealed Communications Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple communications between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair were confidants.
The messages, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing intimate – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by beating and abandonment it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”
During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was at one time a leading light in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have remained about his association with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a previous batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed 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 reply, GOP lawmakers released a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably 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 overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“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 reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined 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.
At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting 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 got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.