Disclosed Communications Depict Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple messages between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair were close contacts.

The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging private – and at times questionable – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, went on to say in the message 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 society.”

Summers was once a key player in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart voice in the progressive media. But questions have lingered about his association with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous tranche 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 legal finding”.

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

The documents show that Summers continued congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars 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 rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote 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 regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein donated more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested 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.

At that point 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 working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple 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-exploitation organizations.