Disclosed Exchanges Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

A series of communications between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as close contacts.

Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and desertion it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, continued in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was at one time a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed figure in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in prison in 2019 in New York City.

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

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Republican 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 taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later 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 requesting 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 linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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