Disclosed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Numerous communications between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair acted as confidants.

The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing intimate – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and relationships.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and abandonment 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 feel if u take the life of your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making sexist comments about women scholars, went on to say in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have persisted about his association with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents 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 detention.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – particularly Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being turned down.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein replied 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 restated his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he wrote. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed 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.

At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually secure 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 non-profit 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 saw each other a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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