by Khadeeja Safdar and David Benoit at Wall Street Journal
Lawrence Summers wanted $1 million to fund an online poetry project his wife was developing. The former Treasury secretary and onetime Harvard University president turned to Jeffrey Epstein.
“I need small scale philanthropy advice. My life will be better if i raise $1m for Lisa,” Mr. Summers said in an email to Epstein in April 2014, referring to his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor. “Mostly it will go to make it a pbs series and for teacher training. Ideas?”
Epstein replied that they could meet in Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Summers invited him to dinner, according to a trove of documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Two days later they made plans to meet at The Fireplace, a cozy restaurant in nearby Brookline, one of several meetings the two men scheduled that year.
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In 2016, a nonprofit linked to Epstein donated $110,000 to Ms. New’s nonprofit, which develops video content about poetry, according to tax records.
The documents reviewed by the Journal, which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, provide new details about the nature and frequency of Epstein’s contacts with an array of powerful people long after he was a registered sex offender. He had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.
Mr. Summers “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction,” and Ms. New’s nonprofit “regrets accepting funding from Epstein,” said a spokeswoman for the couple. Ms. New’s nonprofit later made a contribution “exceeding the amount received, to a group working against sex trafficking,” the spokeswoman said.
Many of the people or institutions named in the documents…