Revealed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

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

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

“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 unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet made advances toward 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 discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women in academia, added 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 once a leading light in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the economic downturn, and a stalwart figure in the progressive media. But doubts have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad exploitation operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the adjudicated 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 requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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