by WorldTribune Staff, November 23, 2025 Real World News
While authorities in Florida were in the midst of a sexual-battery investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers spent part of his 2005 honeymoon with wife Elisa New on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, documents released by the House Oversight Committee show.
Summers resigned as Harvard president on June 30, 2006, but would return in 2010 after leaving his position after just one year as the Obama Administration’s Director of the National Economic Council. The newly released files show Summers maintained a close relationship with Epstein for many years.
The Harvard Crimson did a deep dive on Summers’ close ties with Epstein, noting in a Nov. 21 analysis that “while Summers has long acknowledged having known Epstein, the honeymoon visit is a new indication of the closeness of their relationship in the 2000s, including during Summers’ tenure in Massachusetts Hall.”
The Crimson noted that “newly surfaced flight details come as Harvard intensifies its scrutiny of Epstein’s ties to Summers after documents released by House Republicans last Wednesday showed the two men exchanging messages at length for years.”
In March 2005, Palm Beach police began inquiring into allegations from the mother of a 14-year-old girl who said Epstein had molested her daughter at his mansion in Palm Beach. Over the following months, detectives identified additional potential victims and witnesses, and in October 2005, police executed a search warrant on Epstein’s home as part of the expanded investigation.
Summers and New married on Dec. 11, 2005 in Cambridge, celebrating their reception in the Harvard Art Museum. On Dec. 21, The Crimson noted that “they boarded Epstein’s plane in Bedford, Massachusetts, according to publicly available flight logs — bound for Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, the standard jumping-off point for reaching Epstein’s private island by helicopter.”
“Those logs also list Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted as Epstein’s partner-in-crime, and Epstein’s longtime pilot, Larry Visoski, as passengers on the same flight,” the report added.
Steven Goldberg, a spokesperson for Summers, confirmed in a statement to The Crimson that Summers and New spent part of their honeymoon on Epstein’s island during their 2005 trip, which has not been previously reported.
“Mr. Summers and Ms. New spent their honeymoon in St. John and Jamaica in December 2005, which was long before Mr. Epstein was arrested for the first time,” Goldberg wrote. “As part of that trip, they made a brief visit of less than a day to Mr. Epstein’s island.”
Even after Epstein’s first arrest, Summers remained in contact with him. In fact, the report notes, Summers’ “correspondence with Epstein spanned nearly a decade and ended only on July 5, 2019 — one day before Epstein was arrested and detained on new federal sex-trafficking charges.”
Epstein died in prison in August 2019.
“The hundreds of messages released by Congress last week revealed a strikingly personal relationship between Summers and Epstein, who bantered regularly about women, politics, and Harvard-related initiatives,” The Crimson noted.
In the messages, Summers repeatedly turned to Epstein for advice in his romantic pursuit of a prominent Chinese economist whom they sometimes referred to by the codename “peril.”
The Crimson notes: “At one point, the two men joked about modeling the probability that Summers would have sex with the woman.”
Summers also wrote in one March 2019 message to Epstein that she could be hesitant to leave him because of his professional influence and connections.
“She must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off but wants professional connection a lot and so holds to it,” Summers wrote.
Summers’ earliest recorded trip on Epstein’s jet predates his Harvard tenure. In September 1998, according to the logs, Summers appeared on a manifest for a trip from Aspen, Colorado, to Washington, D.C., alongside several other passengers, including Emmy Tayler, who worked for Epstein at the time.
On Wednesday, , just one day after Harvard launched a fresh investigation into his interactions with Epstein, Summers resigned from teaching at the Ivy League institution and announced that he would go on leave from his role as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government
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