Revealed Exchanges Illustrate Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

Multiple messages between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have emerged this week, showing the pair acted as confidants.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men sharing private – and at times unseemly – opinions on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to determine why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor 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 take the life of your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers stated to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a controversy after making discriminatory comments about women scholars, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was at one time a key player in Democratic circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a stalwart voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a former connection of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in prison in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a agent for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Democratic lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that indicate Epstein was of the opinion Trump was knew about conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Republican lawmakers issued a much bigger tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers continued congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “participation and association” with Summers, among other well-known Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – especially Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being turned down.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” 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 affirmed his regret in a recent statement. “I harbor significant regrets in my lifetime,” 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was named a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later determined Epstein “lacked the scholarly credentials visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined 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 eventually receive 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 non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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