Guilt By Association: Larry Summers And Jeffrey Epstein
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/us/harvard-larry-summers-epstein.html?searchResultPosition=1
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/epstein-is-a-failure-of-the-21st-century-elites-71d83d12?mod=author_content_page_1_pos_1
I have to confess to not having followed the Jeffrey Epstein saga all that carefully. The third attachment by Peggy Noonan from The Wall Street Journal’s web site on November 21 gives a pretty good summary of what I missed. Why haven’t I pursued this story, given that it seems to be leading the TV news every evening lately?
The first reason is that Epstein is dead (we think) and his consort, Ghislaine Maxwell, is in prison, albeit Club Fed. Their fates are sealed unless her friend President Trump pardons Maxwell who was moved to improved prison facilities despite having been convicted of sex offenses which should have precluded having her incarceration situation improved. I wonder why that happened? Perhaps she knows someone in a position of great power?
Second, that these two felons trafficked young girls to have sex with rich and prominent men is neither surprising nor interesting. They preyed on the weak and those in need of money. That’s what people like these two do.
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However, I still want to know where the parents of these young girls were when they were recruited for what amounted to prostitution. Like I said, I haven’t followed the details and this may be common knowledge among those who have paid close attention.
Third, that men like Donald Trump and Bill Clinton would be involved with people like Epstein and Maxwell is equally unsurprising. I’m not even sure it’s news. Between Monica and the Access Hollywood tapes, we know what kind of behavior to expect from Clinton and Trump.
So, as I said, I wasn’t really on top of this story.
But, I am paying attention now. Why?
As the first two articles from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal report, others are getting caught up in the web these two felons spun even before the files are fully released. Former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard, Larry Summers, is stepping back from many of his public commitments because he carried on correspondence with Epstein long after Epstein had been found guilty of sex trafficking. Now Summers has a long history of making awful comments about women, so perhaps his being next is not a surprise. It is reasonable to suppose that there are other high profile names in the remaining Epstein files, besides Andrew formerly known as Prince.
Is this really news?
What do the victims of Epstein’s abuse want now? That was not clear to me from the meeting with the press the victims held in front of the Capitol on Tuesday, November 18 with three members of Congress who spearheaded the legislation that is going to make all the files public.
I think the remaining questions are:
- Will all of the files really be made public or will Trump’s Justice Department hold some back for future investigations—like of Democrats?
- Will names be made public that can then lead to law suits against them? I’m not sure that the victims haven’t done this already unless they all signed non-disclosure agreements. I am also unsure of the statute of limitations on some these alleged crimes.
- Will there be meaningful fall out from revelations of what is in these files? Will Hollywood careers be ended? Will prominent politicians withdraw from service? Will captains of industry, finance, and banking be forced to step down?
It would be very surprising to find out that what is contained in these files is not of great significance given the tenacious resistance to their being made public by so many, especially the President.
President Trump says he has nothing to hide, but if he continued to consort with Epstein and Maxwell after Epstein’s initial conviction as a sex offender in 2008, or if Epstein’s putative suicide was nothing of the kind, then many people including the President of the United States may have a great deal to explain.
A ”second-rate burglary” (the words used by Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler early in the Watergate investigation) led to the downfall of one President. Maybe this sex scandal will lead to the downfall of another.
As an addendum, written because it has been suggested to me by people who know far more than I, that the Epstein-Maxwell arrangement might not only have been about the sex between powerful and young women, but also far more. The story is always assumed to be limited to the sex for money narrative and that the customers of Epstein and Maxwell were the “johns.”
What if the real customers of Epstein and Maxwell were foreign or domestic espionage and intelligence agencies looking to gather “kompromat” on these men for future blackmailing?
As I thought about this theory, it began to make sense. Perhaps what is in the Epstein files that might prove so embarrassing is not Epstein’s friends who availed themselves of the young girls Maxwell secured, but those who hired Epstein and Maxwell to get the dirt on these powerful men.
If that is the case, the underhanded methods used by intelligence agencies will come to light. As a friend said, “it was all just a honey trap.”
These intelligence agencies cannot be happy about that. Perhaps these customers are the ones that really fear what’s in the Epstein files. If the CIA, Mossad, MI6 or Chinese and Russian agencies were the real customers of Epstein and Maxwell, this story could explode.
More to come if the files are ever made public.
