Uncovered Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Numerous exchanges between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair acted as close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging intimate – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion 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 murder your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, added in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed presence in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have remained about his connection with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was aware of 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.

These records show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified 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 reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty 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 left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After reporting about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.