Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Multiple communications between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as close contacts.

Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing private – and at times improper – opinions on public affairs and personal connections.

I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by beating and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment discussion after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about female academics, added in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a key player in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a committed voice in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein replied 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s career was advancing. 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 pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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