Jeffrey Epstein lined up disgraced Harvard economist Larry Summers to help run his estate, newly released Justice Department documents show.
The latest cache, part of an 11,034-document dump under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, shows former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley, 68, was named in 2012 as “successor executor” of Epstein’s will—a back-up figure to take control if the main executors could not serve, according to the Financial Times.
The outlet reports that Staley reappears in wills from 2013 and 2014, with the 2014 document also adding former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Summers, 71, as another successor executor.
Epstein’s final 2019 will—signed shortly before he died in a New York jail—no longer lists either man, the FT says. Under the documents, executors and trustees were separate roles, but they suggest Epstein wanted Staley and then Summers in reserve to help direct his wealth if first-choice figures fell away.
That sits uneasily with Staley’s effort to distance himself from Epstein.
At a London tribunal in March, Staley told the court he had rebuffed a request to serve as a trustee of the estate and argued that refusal showed they were not close friends, according to the FT.
Regulators did not buy his attempts to downplay the relationship. Earlier this year, Staley lost his appeal against a lifetime ban from senior U.K. financial roles after the Financial Conduct Authority found he “acted without integrity” by approving a 2019 Barclays letter claiming he “did not have a close relationship” with Epstein.
Summers has also faced the fallout over his ties to the financier.
Emails released by a congressional committee showed him in regular contact with Epstein through 2019—the same year Epstein died while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges—trading notes on donations, introductions, and personal matters, including women.
After those disclosures, Summers said he was “deeply ashamed” and stepped back from roles at OpenAI, think tanks, and his teaching duties at Harvard, where he has been tenured since 1983.
But that was not before students secretly recorded him discussing the scandal and pushed for accountability, even as the university moved to investigate the students who first reported on the connection between the two.
The latest revelations show Epstein was not just emailing and dining with some of the most powerful figures in finance and economics—he was quietly lining them up to help oversee his fortune after he was gone.
They are also part of a broader storm over how the Justice Department has handled the legally mandated dumps of Epstein material.
In one batch, DOJ briefly posted records showing Donald Trump’s previously unknown flights on Epstein’s jet—including a trip with Epstein and a 20-year-old woman—before taking the files offline and later restoring them.
In another, an image of a framed photo of Trump and Epstein in a desk drawer appeared to disappear from the online “Epstein Library” before reappearing days later.
Victims and lawmakers have also blasted the department for heavy redactions and apparent gaps. In a statement, 19 victims accused the DOJ of flouting the transparency law by withholding material and clumsily handling survivors’ identities.
Trump, 79, has fumed that the releases are “terrible” for powerful figures whose names and images appear in the trove, even as he boasts that he once threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.
The Daily Beast has attempted to contact Staley and representatives for Summers for comment.
