Uncovered Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes

Numerous exchanges between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair were trusted allies.

Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing intimate – and at times questionable – perspectives on public affairs and personal connections.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be unimportant to your entry 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 violence and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in the Democratic Party circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have persisted about his association with Epstein, a long-standing connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

These records show that Summers continued congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” 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 related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers departed the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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