Revealed Communications Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes

Numerous messages between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.

The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging private – and at times unseemly – opinions on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission 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 physical abuse and neglect it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 message. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a scandal after making discriminatory comments about women in academia, continued in the message to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a stalwart presence in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a prior set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a agent for Summers stated that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, GOP lawmakers issued a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers maintained amicable contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “role and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known Democratic figures and corporate executives.

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

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” 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 restated his sorrow 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 contributed 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 “was missing the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application outlined 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.

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

After Summers left the White House, he began soliciting Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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