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A top economic official in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations sought advice from convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein about his relationship with an unidentified woman, bombshell emails released by the House Oversight Committee show.
Lawrence Summers, who served as Clinton’s final Treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council under Obama, routinely picked Epstein’s twisted mind about how to interact with the woman, who apparently lived in London at the time of the exchanges.
On March 16, 2019, fewer than four months before Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges, Summers wrote that he and the woman had “talked on the phone.”
“Then [she said] ‘I can’t talk later’. Dint [sic] think I can talk tomorrow,” the former president of Harvard University continued in the correspondence tucked in 20,000 pages of documents made public by the panel Wednesday.
“I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u [sic] are,” Summers complained. “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,” the now-70-year-old summed up. “I dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”
“[S]hes smart,” Epstein told Summers in a responding email 11 minutes later. “[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].”
Epstein, 66, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell 147 days later, on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial.
The March 2019 exchange was not the only time Epstein and the married Summers discussed the fairer sex.
In November 2018, Summers forwarded Epstein an email from a different woman with the comment: “Think no response for a while probably appropriate.”
“She’s already begining to sound needy :) nice,” Epstein replied.
The emails shed new light on the closeness of the relationship between Epstein and Summers, who currently serves on the board of directors at OpenAI.
In 2014, Summers had sought advice from Epstein about how to raise $1 million to help his wife, Harvard professor Elisa New, create an online educational project about American poetry.
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.
Follow The Post’s coverage on the Jeffrey Epstein files, Ghislaine Maxwell, and more
- Epstein emails with ex-Obama lawyer claim he stopped talking to Bill Clinton
- Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva to be sworn in Wednesday – expected to force a vote on release of Epstein files
- Sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to ask Trump admin to commute prison sentence, House Dems claim
- House Dems summon Andrew Mountbatten Windsor to answer questions about ‘long-standing’ friendship with Epstein
When approached for comment by the New York Times Wednesday, Summers referred the outlet — to which he contributes opinion pieces — to statements in which he has been “regretting my past associations with Mr. Epstein.”
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.
Epstein and Trump, now 79, enjoyed a warm friendship in the 1990s and early 2000s, but reportedly fell out in the middle of the latter decade amid a bidding war over a since-demolished Palm Beach, Fla., mansion.
This past July, Trump told reporters that he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago over his and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s penchant for plucking young girls who worked at the resort’s spa to groom and abuse.
“[T]rump said he asked me to resign,” Epstein told discredited author Michael Wolff in a Jan. 31, 2019, email released by Democrats on the Oversight Committee ahead of the larger release. “[I was] never a member ever.”
“[O]f course he knew about the girls as he asked [G]hislaine to stop,” Epstein added.
Democrats pointed to the emails — from 2011, 2015, and 2019 — suggesting that Trump had more detailed knowledge of Epstein’s perversions than previously claimed.
In the April 2, 2011, email, Epstein claimed to Maxwell, that a victim “spent hours at my house with him [Trump, and] he has never once been mentioned.”
The White House promptly revealed that the victim in question was Virginia Giuffre, who never accused Trump of any wrongdoing before taking her own life this past April.
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