Revealed Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
A series of exchanges between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair served as close contacts.
Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing intimate – and at times improper – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission 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 abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote 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 REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment controversy after a once 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 in academia, added in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed presence in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have remained about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad child sex trafficking operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers released a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers continued amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being turned down.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”
Summers reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he said. “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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later 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 asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
