Disclosed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple messages between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair served as close contacts.

Their correspondence, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times improper – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

I am attempting to determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But made advances toward a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS IDEA.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was previously a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart figure in the left-leaning punditry. But questions have lingered about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad exploitation operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a prior set 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 guilty verdict”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the adjudicated child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and business leaders.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 sorrow in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” he commented. “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 determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application suggested a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers exited the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.