Revealed Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
Multiple exchanges between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”
At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was at one time a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers continued amicable contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.
“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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
