Revealed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Numerous messages between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair served as trusted allies.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging private – and at times unseemly – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, continued in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was previously a leading light in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a stalwart voice in the liberal commentariat. But questions have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad child sex trafficking 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 article, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and association” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 commented. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for charitable 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 saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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