Uncovered Communications Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Multiple messages between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.

Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing intimate – and at times questionable – views on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, continued in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was at one time a leading light in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a steadfast figure in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening 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 association” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated 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 normally possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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