Disclosed Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple communications between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair acted as close contacts.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times improper – views on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But flirted with 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 dealing with an admissions controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women in academia, continued in the email to Epstein: I noted 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 at one time a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a stalwart figure in the progressive media. But doubts have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers released a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and corporate executives.

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

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote 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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually 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 requesting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing 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 media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.