Uncovered Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

Numerous exchanges between convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing personal – and at times improper – perspectives on political matters and personal connections.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a stalwart figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

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

Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a larger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent Democratic figures and business leaders.

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

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “disregard the 'daddy' comment, I'm going out with the motorcycle guy, you handled it well.. irritation indicates concern., no complaining demonstrated strength.”

Summers restated his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he said. “I’ve expressed this previously: my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a grave mistake.”

Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined 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 confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.

By that time Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately receive 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 developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men got together 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 anti-sex-trafficking organizations.