Revealed Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Numerous messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair acted as close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing personal – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and personal connections.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment 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 take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

At that time, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about female academics, went on to say in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a committed figure in the progressive media. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Republican lawmakers published a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s apprehension.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.

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, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“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 regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable 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 dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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