Revealed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Multiple communications between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as close contacts.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing intimate – and at times improper – perspectives on public affairs and personal connections.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment 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 murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance discussion after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers issued a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers continued friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being turned down.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 restated his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

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

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