Revealed Exchanges Show Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple communications between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.

Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad child sex trafficking operation before his demise in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers issued a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”

Summers affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he commented. “As previously stated, my connection to Jeffrey Epstein represented a serious lapse in judgment.”

Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.

At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.