Uncovered Emails Depict Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Multiple messages between convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair were confidants.

Their correspondence, dating from 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging personal – and at times questionable – opinions on politics and relationships.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor 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 take the life of your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about women scholars, added in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the financial crisis, and a committed voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad exploitation operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a representative for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers published a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his overtures toward an unidentified 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. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers departed the White House, he began asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After reporting about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.