Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple communications between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair acted as close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However 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.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions discussion after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, added in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in liberal circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a stalwart voice in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers released a much bigger 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 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 examine Epstein’s “participation and connection” 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, disclosed to 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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he said. “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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.