Revealed Communications Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

A series of messages between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair served as trusted allies.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging personal – and at times questionable – opinions on public affairs and personal connections.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by beating 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} determine why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by violence and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers released a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final 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 “involvement and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and corporate executives.

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

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

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

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

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