Revealed Exchanges Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes
Multiple exchanges between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.
These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times improper – views on politics and relationships.
“I’m trying 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,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making sexist comments about female academics, continued in the correspondence 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 population.”
Summers was previously a key player in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a steadfast voice in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad exploitation operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following disclosure of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and industry figures.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”
Summers reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.
By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
