Disclosed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

A series of messages between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times improper – opinions on political matters and relationships.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS INSIGHT.”

During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, continued 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 population.”

Summers was at one time a prominent figure in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But concerns have lingered about his association with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, Republican lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “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 affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for non-profit 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 multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After reporting about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.