Revealed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Numerous exchanges between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing personal – and at times improper – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, went on to say in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was previously a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a stalwart voice in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have lingered about his association with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing 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 representative for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Left-leaning 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, GOP lawmakers issued a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final 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 examine Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – notably 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 anonymous woman, and being rejected.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote 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 said. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together 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 combatting sex trafficking organizations.