Uncovered Exchanges Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous exchanges between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.
The messages, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.
I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”
Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about female academics, continued in the correspondence 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 at one time a key player in the Democratic Party 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 committed figure in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers issued a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers kept up amicable contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rebuffed.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 restated his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he commented. “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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers exited the White House, he began requesting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.
