Uncovered Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes
A series of messages between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times improper – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse 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 feel if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
At that time, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was once a prominent figure in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a stalwart figure in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have persisted about his association with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Left-leaning 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 reply, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with 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 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 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began requesting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen 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.
