Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

A series of communications between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging intimate – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, added in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the progressive media. But doubts have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a representative for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers published a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote 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 restated his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he commented. “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 designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for charitable 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 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-sex-trafficking organizations.