Revealed Communications Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Multiple messages between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair were confidants.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times questionable – views on politics and personal connections.

I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”

At that time, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women in academia, continued in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a committed presence in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have remained about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad child sex trafficking operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers issued a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last 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 relationship” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 restated his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

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 conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

Harvard only ceased accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.

At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually receive 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 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 media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.