Revealed Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Numerous exchanges between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as close contacts.

These exchanges, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing intimate – and at times questionable – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating 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 feel if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment 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, added in the correspondence 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 the populace.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers issued a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers continued amicable contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”

Summers reiterated his regret 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications 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 that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.