Disclosed Exchanges Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates
Numerous messages between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair acted as close contacts.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – perspectives on political matters and personal connections.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”
Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making sexist 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 stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was once a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a committed voice in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have persisted about his association with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware 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.
The documents show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 restated 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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified 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 eventually secure 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 pursuing 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 twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
