Revealed Exchanges Show Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple exchanges between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as trusted allies.

The messages, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing personal – and at times unseemly – perspectives on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making gender-biased comments about women scholars, continued in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a key player in liberal circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a steadfast presence in the progressive media. But doubts have persisted about his association with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers issued a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

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 connection” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 restated his remorse 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the educational background visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began asking Epstein for non-profit 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 met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “above and beyond” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.