Disclosed Communications Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple communications between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men sharing private – and at times unseemly – views on politics and personal connections.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant 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 physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 message. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, continued in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart figure in the progressive media. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his demise in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers released a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the convicted 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 asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein wrote 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 restated his remorse in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” 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 contributed 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 determined Epstein “was missing the scholarly credentials 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 admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.

By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council 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 working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations emerged, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.