Uncovered Emails Show Epstein and Summers as Confidantes

Numerous communications between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were released this week, revealing the pair were confidants.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by beating and desertion 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 think if u kill your baby by physical abuse and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with 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 wrestling with an admissions discussion after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about female academics, continued in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a key player in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the financial crisis, and a steadfast presence in the liberal commentariat. But questions have remained about his association with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a broad child sex trafficking operation before his demise in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was had knowledge of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers issued a larger collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would be instructing the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and relationship” with Summers, among other well-known liberal leaders and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the details of non-profit social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unidentified woman, and being rebuffed.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein replied in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”

Summers restated his regret in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later concluded Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically 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 then Obama’s star was rising. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House NEC 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 pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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