Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

A series of exchanges between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and ex- US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.

These exchanges, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times unseemly – views on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and abandonment it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 email. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was wrestling with an admissions debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making sexist comments about female academics, continued in the email to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a leading light in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed presence in the liberal commentariat. But questions have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging exploitation operation before his demise in prison in 2019 in New York City.

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

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein thought Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers issued a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers kept up friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange taking place only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 affirmed his remorse in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing 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 “more than” of that received to anti-sex-trafficking organizations.