Revealed Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
A series of messages between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair were trusted allies.
The messages, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging intimate – and at times unseemly – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by violence and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance debate after a previously 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, continued in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was once a leading light in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed presence in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a previous batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers issued a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 regret 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left 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 charitable contributions to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together 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 anti-exploitation organizations.