Revealed Emails Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple exchanges between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair were close contacts.
Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing intimate – and at times questionable – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However hit on 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 enrollment controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about female academics, went on to say in the email to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning 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 designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a stalwart voice in the liberal commentariat. But questions have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable 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 replied 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 regret in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed 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 gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
