Revealed Communications Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

Numerous communications between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as trusted allies.

The messages, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times improper – perspectives on politics and relationships.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry 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 neglect it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women in academia, added in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was at one time a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a committed presence in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers published a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and industry figures.

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

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein responded 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 affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “I’ve expressed this previously: my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a grave mistake.”

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 appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the scholarly credentials visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together 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 anti-sex-trafficking organizations.