Disclosed Emails Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes

A series of messages between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing private – and at times questionable – perspectives on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

I am attempting to understand 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 feel if u kill your baby by beating 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 are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, added in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a leading light in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart voice in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing contact 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 the release of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Conservative lawmakers issued a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

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 connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers exited the White House, he began soliciting 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 associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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