Revealed Communications Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

A series of messages between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair served as trusted allies.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

I am attempting to understand why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS INSIGHT.”

At that time, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was at one time a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a steadfast voice in the liberal commentariat. But questions have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

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

These records show that Summers continued congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote 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 reiterated his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” 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 “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s career was advancing. 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 philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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