Uncovered Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Trusted Friends

A series of communications between found guilty sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair served as confidants.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men discussing personal – and at times improper – perspectives on political matters and relationships.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u murder your baby by violence and abandonment 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 take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. Yet hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a scandal after making gender-biased comments about female academics, continued in the message to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a leading light in liberal circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a committed figure in the progressive media. But questions have persisted about his association with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his demise in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a previous batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a representative for Summers said that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed 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 reply, Republican lawmakers published a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the particulars 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 rebuffed.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein responded 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 restated his regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “I’ve expressed this previously: my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a grave mistake.”

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 designated a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later found Epstein “was missing the academic qualifications visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would ultimately receive appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body 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 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 twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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