Revealed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

A series of messages between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair were close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times questionable – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But hit on 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 grappling with an admissions controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, continued in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a steadfast figure in the liberal commentariat. But questions have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive exploitation operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release 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 suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive batch 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 taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.

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

“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 affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he commented. “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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared 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 ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen 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.