Uncovered Emails Show Epstein and Larry Summers as Confidantes

A series of exchanges between convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US finance chief Larry Summers have emerged this week, indicating the pair served as confidants.

These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times questionable – opinions on political matters and personal connections.

“I’m trying to determine why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} determine why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by violence and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. DO NOT SHARE THIS OBSERVATION.”

Back then, Harvard University was grappling with an acceptance debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who resigned amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about women scholars, continued in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was owned by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Summers was once a key player in Democratic circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a stalwart voice in the left-leaning punditry. But doubts have persisted about his connection with Epstein, a long-standing associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

Following disclosure of a prior tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers said that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his guilty verdict”.

Democratic Party lawmakers made public emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers released a more extensive batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

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

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

In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – especially Summers’s dislike for Trump – as well as the details of charitable social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.

“she's intelligent. holding you accountable for past mistakes,” Epstein responded 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 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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later concluded Epstein “was missing the scholarly credentials visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was not prepared to pursue”.

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

At that point Obama’s star was rising. Summers would later 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 philanthropic 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 met a multiple times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After reporting about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to combatting sex trafficking organizations.