Disclosed Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple communications between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing private – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and relationships.

I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance debate after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about female academics, added in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart voice in the progressive media. But concerns have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed 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 reply, GOP lawmakers published a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “role and connection” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 restated his regret in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers exited 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 gifts to projects linked to 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.