Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as confidants.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – perspectives on political matters and relationships.
I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance 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 beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. 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 formerly incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about female academics, added in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was once a prominent figure in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a committed presence in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers stated that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers published a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 restated his remorse 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would later secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
