Revealed Communications Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

A series of exchanges between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair served as confidants.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing intimate – and at times unseemly – perspectives on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was previously a leading light in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a steadfast presence in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a extensive exploitation operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers kept up amicable contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”

Summers affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “I’ve expressed this previously: my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a grave mistake.”

Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.

By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began requesting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.