Revealed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

A series of exchanges between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as confidants.

Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on politics and personal connections.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion 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 take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But doubts have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers kept up amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly 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 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 restated his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he said. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting 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 linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.