Disclosed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
A series of communications between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair acted as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging intimate – and at times questionable – perspectives on politics and relationships.
I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy 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 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 ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a stalwart figure in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run 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 article, 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 suggest Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers issued a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.
“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 restated his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council 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 working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
