Disclosed Communications Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

A series of exchanges between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair acted as close contacts.

Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing intimate – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine 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 email. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling 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 gender-biased comments about female academics, added in the correspondence 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 once a key player in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a steadfast figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic Party lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers released a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers continued amicable contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in 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 responded 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 affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 gave 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 concluded Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually 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 star was rising. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed 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 got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.