Revealed Communications Depict Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Multiple exchanges between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair were confidants.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about female academics, added in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a key player in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a stalwart figure in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have remained about his connection with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a representative for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.

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

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

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein replied in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”

Summers reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After reporting about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.