Disclosed Exchanges Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple communications between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging intimate – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and relationships.

I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women scholars, continued 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 society.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a stalwart figure in the liberal commentariat. But questions have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers stated that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers continued congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.

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

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein replied 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows typically 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.

By then Obama’s profile was growing. 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 non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions 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 came out, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.