Uncovered Communications Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

A series of messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times questionable – views on political matters and relationships.

I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor 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 violence and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”

During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was previously a leading light 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 market collapse, and a steadfast figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad exploitation operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Democratic lawmakers released 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 reply, Republican lawmakers issued a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous 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 remorse 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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