Revealed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

Multiple messages between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as close contacts.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your acceptance 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 desertion it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS INSIGHT.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women in academia, went on to say in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was at one time a key player in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a stalwart voice in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death 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 spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers issued a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote 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 affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 gave 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 concluded Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately win 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 philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects linked 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 came out, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.