Revealed Communications Show Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
A series of communications between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – views on politics and relationships.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment 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 feel if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making sexist comments about female academics, added in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was at one time a key player in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his association with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier 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 conviction”.
Democratic Party 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 retaliation, GOP lawmakers published a more extensive tranche 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 apprehension.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he said. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein gave more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
