Uncovered Exchanges Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends
Numerous messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as close contacts.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on politics and interpersonal dynamics.
I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”
At that time, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, added in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”
Summers was once a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.
Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers published a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The released materials show that Summers continued congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s apprehension.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.
“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein responded in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”
Summers affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he said. “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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found 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 stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually receive 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 non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts 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 emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
