Disclosed Communications Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple messages between found guilty child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US finance chief Larry Summers came to light this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”

During that period, Harvard University was wrestling with an acceptance debate after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making sexist comments about female academics, added in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a stalwart figure in the progressive media. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad child sex trafficking operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed 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, Republican lawmakers issued a much bigger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents 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 detention.

Trump stated on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“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 remorse 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 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 determined Epstein “was missing the educational background 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 pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.

At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began requesting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men met 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.