Revealed Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple communications between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair acted as close contacts.

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

I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure 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 committed presence in the progressive media. But concerns have remained about his association with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public 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 larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being turned down.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein replied 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he said. “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 conduct research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.