Uncovered Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple communications between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair were close contacts.

The messages, spanning 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging private – and at times unseemly – perspectives on politics and interpersonal dynamics.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your acceptance 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 violence and desertion it must be unimportant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 communication. Yet flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS IDEA.”

Back then, Harvard University was dealing with an acceptance controversy after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who resigned amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women in academia, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was previously a leading light in Democratic circles – a ex- treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key engineers of Barack Obama’s approach to the economic downturn, and a stalwart presence in the liberal commentariat. But doubts have lingered about his association with Epstein, a longtime associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was charged with a broad child sex trafficking operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a earlier tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 report, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.

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, Republican lawmakers published a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

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 connection” with Summers, among other influential liberal leaders and corporate executives.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s contempt for Trump – as well as the particulars of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, shared with Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unidentified woman, and being turned down.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded 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 affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he said. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

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 named a visiting fellow to perform research. The university later determined Epstein “was missing the scholarly credentials visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would eventually win appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed 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 gifts to projects connected to Summers’s wife, and the two men saw each other a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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