Revealed Exchanges Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Numerous communications between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing personal – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was at one time a key player in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart presence in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and connection” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.”

Summers affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he said. “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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded 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 stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.

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

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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