More than 20,000 pages of emails released this week by the House Oversight Committee reveal that former Harvard University president and U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers sought personal romantic advice from the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — even after Epstein’s predatory interest in minors was publicly known.
Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton (1999–2001) and as director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama (2009–2011), wrote to Epstein on March 16, 2019, less than four months before Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. In the email, Summers described a conversation with a woman:
“Then [she said] ‘I can’t talk later’. Dint [sic] think I can talk tomorrow.”
“I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u [sic] are,” Summers wrote.
“And then I said. Did u [sic] really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming’. She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans. I said ok I got to go call me when u feel like it.
“Tone was not of good feeling,” Summers summed up. “I dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”
Eleven minutes after that message, Epstein replied with guidance on the interaction:
“[S]hes smart,” Epstein wrote. “[M]aking you pay for past errors. [I]gnore the daddy im [sic] going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh [sic].”
In another exchange from November 2018, Summers forwarded an email from a different woman with the note:
“Think no response for a while probably appropriate.”
Epstein replied:
“She’s already begining to sound needy 🙂 nice.”
The emails shed new light on the closeness of the relationship between Epstein and Summers, who serves on the board of directors at OpenAI.
Summers’ relationship with Epstein was not only personal but also professional and philanthropic. In 2014, Summers reached out to Epstein for help raising $1 million for a poetry-education project led by his wife, Harvard professor Elisa New. He wrote:
“My life will be better if i raise $1m for Lisa,” adding, “Mostly it will go to make it a pbs series and for teacher training.”
Though Summers’ office says he “did not personally receive money from Epstein” and did not solicit donations for Harvard after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, Questions remain because multiple meetings between the two men occurred between 2013 and 2016.
The exchange was reported in 2023 by the Wall Street Journal, which noted that a nonprofit linked to New had received a $100,000 donation from Epstein.
Summers also appears in court-documents revealing that he flew on Epstein’s private plane while serving in government. For example, records show a 1998 flight on Epstein’s Boeing 727 when Summers was Deputy Treasury Secretary.
Summers, when approached, referred to earlier statements in which he said he was “regretting my past associations with Mr. Epstein.” That acknowledgement, while necessary, may not suffice for many who expect higher accountability from leaders who once held power over national economic policy.
Epstein and Summers also discussed President Trump in their newly revealed correspondence, with the former telling Summers in 2017 that the commander-in-chief has “[n]ot one decent cell in his body.”
“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” the disgraced financier added in the same message.
“[Y]our world does not understand how dumb he really is,” Epstein warned Summers in a May 28, 2017, email. “[H]e will blame everyone around him … for bad results.”
Democrats pointed to the emails released on Wednesday — from 2011, 2015, and 2019 — suggesting that Trump had more detailed knowledge of Epstein’s perversions than previously claimed.
