Uncovered Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
Numerous exchanges between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.
The messages, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor 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 violence and abandonment it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was once a prominent figure in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a steadfast voice in the liberal commentariat. But questions have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad child sex trafficking operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers released a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers continued friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring 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 examine Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to 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. “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 sorrow 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body 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 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 multiple 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.
