Disclosed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes

A series of messages between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair were confidants.

Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing intimate – and at times unseemly – perspectives on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be not a factor to your entry 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 physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, went on to say in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a representative for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed 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 reply, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers continued friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being rejected.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable 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 twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After media coverage about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.