Uncovered Emails Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Trusted Friends

Numerous messages between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair were trusted allies.

These exchanges, covering 2013 to early 2019, show the two men sharing private – and at times unseemly – opinions on public affairs and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your entry to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be not a factor to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and are unable to work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an admissions discussion after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position amid a uproar after making discriminatory comments about female academics, continued in the email 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 society.”

Summers was once a prominent figure in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary engineers of Barack Obama’s handling to the market collapse, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But questions have persisted about his relationship with Epstein, a long-standing contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive child sex trafficking operation before his passing in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following publication of a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

Left-leaning lawmakers made public 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 reply, GOP lawmakers published a larger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The documents show that Summers kept up congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – notably Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the aspects of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being turned down.

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 reiterated his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he wrote. “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 contributed 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 determined Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application outlined a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s profile was growing. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House NEC 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 working on a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects linked to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After news about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “in excess” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.