Revealed Communications Show Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Numerous exchanges between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as close contacts.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times questionable – views on political matters and personal connections.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about female academics, went on to say in the message 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 the populace.”

Summers was previously a key player in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers stated that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers released a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“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 sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed 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.

At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic 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 “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.