Disclosed Communications Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Numerous exchanges between adjudicated sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers came to light this week, indicating the pair served as close contacts.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite feel if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by beating and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women scholars, continued in the correspondence 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 at one time a prominent figure in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart presence in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a broad child sex trafficking operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a earlier set of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein believed Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers continued congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be requesting the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s contempt 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 anonymous woman, and being turned down.

“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 affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “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 associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was designated a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.

At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately secure appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.

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

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