Disclosed Emails Illustrate Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple communications between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair served as trusted allies.

These exchanges, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing intimate – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. However made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, continued in the email to Epstein: “I observed 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 key player in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But concerns have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

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

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, GOP lawmakers published a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and connection” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”

Summers reiterated his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he wrote. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

Harvard only ceased 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 receive appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited 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 philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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