Disclosed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends
Multiple messages between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as confidants.
These exchanges, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing personal – and at times improper – views on politics and personal connections.
I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite believe 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 take the life of your baby by beating and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”
During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women scholars, continued in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was previously a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a steadfast presence in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad exploitation operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
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 prominent Democrats and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.
“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 restated his regret 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on 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 twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
