Revealed Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

Numerous exchanges between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US treasury head Larry Summers came to light this week, showing the pair served as confidants.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing intimate – and at times improper – perspectives on public affairs and personal connections.

I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand 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,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad exploitation operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers published a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening 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 investigate Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 regret in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “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 appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable 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 dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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