Uncovered Exchanges Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
Numerous messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as confidants.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging intimate – and at times questionable – perspectives on public affairs and personal connections.
I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”
During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about female academics, added in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was previously a key player in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his association with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad child sex trafficking operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“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 reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 concluded Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately 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 asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects linked 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 emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
