Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced on Monday that he is withdrawing from all public engagements due to the repercussions from the release of emails exchanged between him and the infamous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I feel profound shame for my actions and acknowledge the harm they have inflicted. I accept full responsibility for my poor choice to continue conversations with Mr. Epstein,” Summers remarked in a statement received by CNBC.
“While I will continue my teaching duties, I will be scaling back my public obligations as part of a broader initiative,” explained Summers, who is a former president of Harvard University where he teaches.
Summers serves on the board of OpenAI and is also a columnist for Bloomberg News.
CNBC has sought a response from OpenAI.
Summers’ statement followed an article published by Harvard’s newspaper, the Crimson, which detailed his emails with Epstein that surfaced last week when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee made public over 20,000 documents obtained via a subpoena from Epstein’s estate.
The Crimson highlighted that when Summers was “trying to develop a romantic relationship with a woman he referred to as a mentee, he consulted a longtime contact: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.”
Correspondence between the two men from November 2018 to July 2019 revealed Summers, who was married, seeking “help from Epstein regarding his pursuit of the woman,” the publication reported.
This period followed a decade after Epstein had pleaded guilty in a Florida state court to solicitation of prostitution from a minor.
In their communications, “Epstein was prompt to provide encouragement and advice, referring to himself in a November 2018 message as Summers’ ‘wing man,’ ” the Crimson indicated.
“For now I think I’m making no progress with her except as an economics mentor,” Summers wrote that month. “I believe I’m currently in the category of being viewed very positively in the rearview mirror.”
“She may be quite uncertain or perhaps wishes to cut ties but seeks a professional association a great deal and thus maintains it.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a former professor at Harvard Law, expressed to CNN that Harvard should dissociate from Summers.
Summers directs the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and is currently teaching five courses at Harvard, according to the Crimson.
Warren remarked that Summers “is untrustworthy” with students due to his past association with Epstein.
“For decades, Larry Summers has shown his preference for serving the affluent and powerful, but his willingness to associate with a convicted sex offender demonstrates an egregious lack of judgment,” Warren asserted to CNN.
“If he is unable to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after the widespread reports of Epstein’s sexual offenses involving minors, then Summers is not reliable enough to counsel our nation’s leaders, policymakers, and institutions — or to educate a new generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”
On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi, upon a request from President Donald Trump, stated she had instructed Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to examine Epstein’s links with Summers, former President Bill Clinton, billionaire tech investor Reid Hoffman, and the bank JPMorgan Chase.
Trump himself was previously friends with Epstein. The president has faced criticism for months due to the Department of Justice’s refusal to disclose investigative records concerning Epstein, who took his own life in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on federal charges of child sex trafficking.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a measure on Tuesday aimed at compelling the DOJ to release the Epstein documents.
