Disclosed Exchanges Illustrate Epstein and Larry Summers as Close Associates

A series of communications between found guilty offender Jeffrey Epstein and one-time US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, indicating the pair served as close contacts.

Their correspondence, covering 2013 to early 2019, demonstrate the two men discussing personal – and at times questionable – views on public affairs and relationships.

I'm struggling to understand why [the] American elite believe if u murder your baby by physical abuse and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by violence and desertion it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”} Summers emailed to Epstein in a 2017 email. However hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS OBSERVATION.”

At that time, Harvard University was dealing with an enrollment controversy after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a one-time president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women scholars, added in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without stating they are more than 51 percent of society.”

Summers was once a leading light in the Democratic Party circles – a one-time treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary architects of Barack Obama’s response to the market collapse, and a stalwart figure in the liberal commentariat. But concerns have persisted about his association with Epstein, a former contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was alleged to have run a wide-ranging sex trafficking of minors operation before his death in jail in 2019 in New York City.

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

Democratic Party lawmakers released 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 response, Conservative lawmakers published a more extensive tranche of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.

The released materials show that Summers continued congenial contact with the found guilty child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the final email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s detention.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “participation and connection” with Summers, among other influential Democrats and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein talk about politics – particularly Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his advances toward an unnamed 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 restated his remorse in a recent statement. “There are many things I regret in my life,” he commented. “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 contributed more than $9m to Harvard and its associated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications 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 admitted guilt to child sex offenses in 2008.

By that time Obama’s star was rising. Summers would eventually secure appointment as director of the White House NEC from January 2009 until November 2010.

After Summers departed the White House, he began asking Epstein for charitable advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made charitable contributions to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a twelve times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.

After media coverage about Epstein’s donations came out, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.