Disclosed Exchanges Show Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates

Multiple communications between adjudicated child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers have emerged this week, revealing the pair acted as close contacts.

The messages, dating from 2013 to early 2019, show the two men exchanging intimate – and at times questionable – views on political matters and interpersonal dynamics.

I am attempting to figure why [the] American elite think if u take the life of your baby by beating and neglect 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 murder your baby by violence and neglect it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote 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 wrestling with an enrollment debate after a previously incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making sexist comments about women scholars, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: I pointed out that half of the IQ in [the] world was held by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”

Summers was once a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the primary designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a stalwart presence in the progressive media. But concerns have remained about his relationship with Epstein, a longtime contact of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his death in custody in 2019 in New York City.

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

Democratic Party lawmakers released emails from the Epstein estate this week that imply Epstein believed Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In reply, Conservative lawmakers published a much bigger 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 final 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 examine Epstein’s “involvement and connection” with Summers, among other influential Democratic figures and industry figures.

In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss 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 advances toward an unnamed woman, and being rejected.

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote 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 reiterated 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 donated more than $9m to Harvard and its related 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 typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.

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

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

After Summers departed the White House, he began requesting Epstein for non-profit advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor developing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men got together a dozen 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.