Disclosed Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

Numerous communications between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, showing the pair served as confidants.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u kill 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} figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and neglect it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making sexist comments about female academics, went on to say 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 society.”

Summers was previously a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a stalwart voice in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a extensive child sex trafficking 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 piece, a representative for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“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 restated his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he said. “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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later 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 asking 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 news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.