Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple messages between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as trusted allies.

Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing private – and at times improper – views on politics and personal connections.

I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about women in academia, went on to say in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a key player in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart voice in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad exploitation operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein thought Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers released a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring 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 “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic 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 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 affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein gave more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers exited the White House, he began asking 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 connected to 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 emerged, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.