Revealed Communications Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes

Numerous communications between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair were close contacts.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times improper – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

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

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a key player in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the liberal commentariat. But questions have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers released a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers continued friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein replied 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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he wrote. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.