Larry Summers solicited Jeffrey Epstein for wife’s nonprofit

Lawrence Summers, the President Emeritus of Harvard University, met with Jeffrey Epstein more than a dozen times following his 2008 conviction, and solicited Epstein for funds to support his wife’s budding nonprofit, new documents revealed.

Epstein donated millions of dollars to Harvard during Summers’ stint as the Ivy League university’s president from 2001-2006, which came after Summers served as US Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton and before his tenure as chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama.

In June of 2008, after Epstein became a convicted sex offender and immediately began serving an 18-month jail term, Harvard began rejecting donations from the disgraced financier, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Nevertheless, new documents obtained by The Journal revealed that Summers continued to meet with Epstein from 2013-2016, and they had several dinners on the books throughout the four-year period.

A spokeswoman for Summers confirmed that “their interactions primarily focused on global economic issues,” and The Journal reported that Summers never received additional funds — personally or for Harvard — from Epstein following his conviction.

However, the 68-year-old Harvard kingpin did solicit money for his wife, Eliza New, who also works at Harvard as a Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature. According to the university’s website, New is on leave for the 2022-2023 academic year, although it’s not confirmed why, or if she will return for the next school year.

Summers asked Epstein for money back in 2014 to help his wife expand her Harvard coursework on poetry to the general public, The Journal reported.

Yet it wasn’t until 2016 that a nonprofit linked to Epstein donated $110,000 to New’s nonprofit, which creates videos about poetry, according to tax documents obtained by the Journal.

The documents didn’t clarify the exact name of New’s nonprofit, but she’s known to be the creator and director of Poetry America, which bills itself on its website as “a public television series and multi-platform educational initiative that brings poetry into classrooms and living rooms around the world…in partnership with Harvard.”

Summers’s spokeswoman confirmed to the Journal that New had a nonprofit that received a donation from Epstein, and later created a public television series.

According to Poetry America’s website, a namesake series titled “Poetry in America” first aired across the U.S. in April 2018, presented by WGBH Boston and distributed by American Public Television. Season 2 returned to screens nationwide in April 2020, and Season 3 began airing in January 2022, as stated on the nonprofit’s website.

The Journal didn’t confirm whether the documents were referring to the “Poetry in America” series.

Barnaby Marsh, a philanthropist and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, said that Epstein had asked him many times if the Templeton Foundation — where Marsh previously served as the executive at large — could also donate money to New’s then-budding poetry project. The Templeton Foundation didn’t ever donate to New’s project, The Journal confirmed.

Yet Marsh himself also met with Epstein about two dozen times, often for breakfast at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, the documents revealed.

Harvard declined to comment on the new findings, The Journal reported. The Post has reached out to Summers and New for comment.