Numerous messages between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as confidants.
These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.
“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by physical abuse 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 take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”
At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, continued in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers was previously a leading light in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a stalwart presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his association with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following the release of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.
Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
The documents show that Summers continued congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and business leaders.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars 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 turned down.
“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein replied 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 reiterated his regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “I’ve expressed this previously: my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a grave mistake.”
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 named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only discontinued accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.
By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually receive 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 philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After news about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.
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