Disclosed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
Multiple exchanges between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair were trusted allies.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing intimate – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your acceptance 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. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”
At that time, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, 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 leading light in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the liberal commentariat. But questions have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers published a larger collection 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 final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars 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.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”
Summers affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would later receive 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 charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.