Uncovered Emails Depict Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple messages between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair were close contacts.

Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing intimate – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and personal connections.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and abandonment it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, went on to say in the correspondence 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 the populace.”

Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s approach to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have persisted about his association with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a extensive exploitation operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public 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 response, Conservative lawmakers released a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring 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 association” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and business leaders.

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, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein responded 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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left 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 charitable contributions to projects linked to 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 emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.