Newly released Justice Department and House Oversight Committee documents reveal that Jeffrey Epstein, scrambling for crisis communications help as his sex-trafficking scandal widened in 2015, was connected to Bill Clinton's former White House press secretary Joe Lockhart by none other than Clinton's ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
In the email chain, on January 25, 2015, Epstein wrote to Summers expressing interest in consulting with Lockhart. Summers obliged the same day, firing off a separate email with the subject line "Connecting the two of you" and vouching for Lockhart as someone who was "capable and experienced" and "calm." He also noted Lockhart had previously assisted Bill Clinton and former CIA Director David Petraeus.
The next day, Epstein emailed Lockhart directly, name-dropping Summers as the referral source. He requested ten minutes of Lockhart's time. Lockhart replied, agreed to a call at 10 a.m. the following day, and asked for the best number to reach him.
That's the Clinton inner circle working as a concierge service for a convicted sex offender.
Lockhart told The Post on Wednesday that he never worked for Epstein and declined the offer. He also claimed he had no idea who suggested Epstein call him, saying he didn't know it was Summers "until the files were released."
That claim sits uneasily beside the emails themselves. Epstein's message to Lockhart explicitly stated that "Larry Summers suggested we speak." Either Lockhart didn't read the email he responded to, or his memory is conveniently selective.
More interesting is what Lockhart said on CNN on July 9, 2019, just three days after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges:
"Most of the Clinton circle, Jeffrey Epstein's not part of it."
He added that he had "never met the guy" and had "met most of the president's friends." The implication was clear: Epstein had no meaningful connection to the Clinton world. The newly released emails tell a different story. Epstein didn't need to be part of the Clinton circle when the Clinton circle came to him.
Summers' role here deserves more than a footnote. This is a former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and a director of the National Economic Council under Obama who, in January 2015, was still a Harvard University president emeritus. He used that stature to broker an introduction between a convicted sex offender and a top-tier Democratic crisis communications operative.
By 2015, Epstein's legal history was no secret. He had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Court filings by Virginia Roberts Giuffre in 2014 had accused him of running a sex-trafficking ring and keeping her as a "sex slave" for rich and powerful men, including Britain's Prince Andrew, who was later stripped of his royal titles. Epstein himself acknowledged the pressure in his email to Summers, describing the situation as "still an onslaught but so preposterous that it becomes more easily seen as a farce."
Summers was not making this introduction blindly. He knew exactly who Epstein was and what Epstein needed help managing.
The consequences have been slow but real. Summers' Epstein ties have cost him his tenure at Harvard University and two consulting positions, one with OpenAI and another with hedge fund DE Shaw. Late last year, Summers said publicly that he is "deeply ashamed" and called the association a "major error of judgment."
Shame arrived about a decade late.
Lockhart was not the only name in Epstein's crisis management contacts. The documents show Epstein regularly sought PR advice from a wide range of New York power players, including outgoing Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathy Ruemmler and former Harvey Weinstein rep Matthew Hiltzik. The pattern is consistent: Epstein didn't just have access to the powerful. The powerful made themselves available to him.
Lockhart, for his part, went on to establish the Washington, DC-based PR and lobbying firm the Glover Park Group, now part of FGS Global. His current firm, Rational 360, has represented clients including the Saudi Public Investment Fund, according to DOJ disclosures, and Blackstone, led by Stephen Schwarzman. This is not a man operating at the margins of influence. He sits at the center of the Democratic establishment's communications infrastructure.
There is no evidence in the document dump that Epstein ever signed a contract with Lockhart. But the question that matters isn't whether a contract was signed. It's how a man awaiting what would become federal sex-trafficking charges could pick up the phone and, within 24 hours, have a former White House press secretary agreeing to a morning call, all because the right person made the introduction.
Sources described growing unease among those close to Bill and Hillary Clinton as more files became public. One insider put it bluntly:
"The Clintons' inner circle is trying to build a moat around Lockhart. They are worried this could all blow up again."
A person briefed on the matter added that Lockhart "has been calling around close friends to assess potential damage to his interests." That's the behavior of a man who knows the documents haven't finished talking.
When subpoenaed to appear last week for a congressional hearing, Bill and Hillary Clinton denied wrongdoing and any knowledge of Epstein's crimes. That denial has become a familiar refrain from the former First Family. But each new document release makes the denial heavier to carry. The question was never whether the Clintons personally participated in Epstein's crimes. It's why their people kept showing up in his orbit, kept taking his calls, kept making introductions, long after any reasonable person would have walked away.
The significance of these files isn't a single smoking gun. It's the infrastructure. Consider the sequence:
This wasn't a cold outreach. This was a network functioning exactly as designed. Epstein had built relationships with people who, when asked, reflexively helped. Not because they endorsed what he did, but because that's how power operates when no one ever faces consequences for saying yes.
Giuffre's allegations laid bare what that network protected. She claimed she was lured into Epstein's orbit in 1999 as a minor, recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell under the guise of working as a massage therapist, which was "a front for sexual exploitation." From 1999 to 2002, Giuffre alleged, Epstein and Maxwell "systematically groomed, physically abused, and sexually trafficked her," flying her on Epstein's private jet to properties in Manhattan, Palm Beach, and his private island in the US Virgin Islands. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for her role in what prosecutors called Epstein's "pyramid of abuse."
Epstein died in jail by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial. Giuffre died by suicide last April.
The victims are gone. The network that sustained Epstein keeps surfacing in the files, one email at a time.
