Uncovered Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
A series of exchanges between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair served as close contacts.
Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and relationships.
“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, added in the email to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and association” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”
Summers reiterated his remorse 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually 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.
By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.