Disclosed Communications Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Confidantes
A series of messages between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair were confidants.
The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your acceptance 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 neglect it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”
Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions controversy 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 gender-biased comments about women in academia, added in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was previously a key player in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a steadfast figure in the progressive media. But doubts have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a extensive exploitation operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers continued congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” 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 appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House NEC 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 pursuing 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 multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
