Disclosed Communications Depict Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Numerous messages between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair were confidants.

The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging intimate – and at times unseemly – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor 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 murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, went on to say in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad child sex trafficking operation before his passing in prison 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 guilty verdict”.

Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers continued amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures 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 regret in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he commented. “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 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 concluded Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he admitted guilt 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 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 pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions 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 news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.