Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

A series of messages between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair served as confidants.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance debate after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment 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 scholars, added in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was previously a key player in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a steadfast figure in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have remained about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets 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, GOP lawmakers published a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place 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 look into Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein replied 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 remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he commented. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body 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 pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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