Disclosed Emails Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

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

The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men exchanging personal – and at times unseemly – views on public affairs and relationships.

“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by beating and neglect it must be unimportant to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite believe if u kill your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But flirted with a few women 10 years ago and cannot work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS OBSERVATION.”

During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an admissions controversy after a once incarcerated woman’s acceptance to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who stepped down amid a uproar after making sexist comments about women in academia, went on to say in the message to Epstein: I noted that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the main architects of Barack Obama’s handling to the economic downturn, and a committed voice in the liberal commentariat. But questions have lingered about his connection with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a extensive sex trafficking of minors operation before his passing in custody in 2019 in New York City.

Following the release of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 article, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “profoundly regrets being in contact with Epstein after his legal finding”.

Left-leaning lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In retaliation, GOP lawmakers issued a more extensive collection of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers maintained friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump stated 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 influential Democrats and industry figures.

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

“she is clever. ensuring you atone for previous missteps,” 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 remorse 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 gave more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “lacked the educational background visiting fellows usually possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.

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

By then Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would later 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 charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made philanthropic donations to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

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