Revealed Exchanges Show Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
Multiple messages between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair were confidants.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing personal – and at times questionable – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating 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} figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”
During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, added in the correspondence 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 the populace.”
Summers was at one time a key player in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the progressive media. But questions have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic Party lawmakers released 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 response, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.
“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 reiterated his regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed 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 profile was growing. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left 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 philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
