The former finance secretary stepped down to “rebuild trust” after facing severe criticism but will continue to teach at Harvard.
Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he will step away from public life. Documents released by the House Oversight Committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who described himself as Summers’ “wingman.”
Former Treasury Secretary Summers expressed deep regret for past communications with Epstein, Politico reported Monday.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and understand the pain they have caused,” he said in a statement to Politico.
“I take full responsibility for my poor decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein. While fulfilling my teaching responsibilities, I will refrain from public engagements as part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with those close to me.”
The Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank, told the Guardian that Summers was resigning from his “distinguished senior fellow” position.
His comments came after lawmakers from both parties urged companies and organizations to end their relationships with Summers. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told CNN that Summers should be held accountable for his years of association with Epstein.
In addition to Summers, emails released last week revealed how Epstein maintained contact with other business executives, journalists, academics, and political figures even after he was convicted in 2008 of soliciting the prostitution of an underage girl.
“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated a penchant for serving the wealthy and highly connected, but his willingness to submissively serve a convicted sex offender demonstrates very poor judgment,” Warren told CNN.
“If he has such a poor ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein, despite the public knowledge of Epstein’s sexual crimes against underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions—or to teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”
A senior Trump administration official told Politico that organizations should end their relationships with Summers because of his significant ties to Epstein, who described himself as Summers’ “wingman” in a November 2018 message.
An unnamed source told Politico, “It’s shocking that Larry Summers is a paid contributor to Bloomberg News, serves on the board of OpenAI, and works at Harvard. What more revelations would institutions have to make about him and his ‘wingman’ to fire him? The British government fired its ambassador to the US for a pittance.”
Summers did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
Summers is now the subject of a new investigation launched by Donald Trump last week. After the names surfaced in the latest documents, which include emails that suggest Trump himself knew about Epstein’s behavior, the US president directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch investigations into the names of several Democrats and organizations.
From 2013 to early 2019, Summers and Epstein exchanged personal thoughts about politics and relationships. Summers lost his Harvard University presidency in 2006 after making sexist comments about female academics, and emails released last week have reignited the debate about his relationship with the late sex offender.
“I’m trying to understand why the American elite thinks that if you beat or abandon your child to death, it will be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,” Summers wrote in an email to Epstein in 2017. “But I had relationships with some women 10 years ago, and I can’t work at any network or think tank anymore. Don’t say that again.”
Summers added, “I saw that women have more than half the IQ in the world, but they didn’t mention that they make up more than 51% of the population.”
Other emails show that Summers approached Epstein for romantic advice. In November 2018, Summers forwarded an email from a woman asking Epstein for advice on when to write a response.
Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One
The top Democrat accused Trump of ‘panic’ after he made a U-turn on the Epstein dossier vote.
Last week, Summers expressed her regret to the Harvard Crimson, saying that “I have the greatest regrets of my life,” she wrote. “As I have said before, my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment.”
The college newspaper also reported that Harvard professors were outraged by the revelations made in the trove of emails published last week. “The warm friendship between Epstein and Summers that appears in the emails is disgusting and shameful,” statistics professor Joseph K. Blitzstein told the Crimson.
The relationship between Summers and Epstein was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2023. According to the outlet, in 2014, Summers sought Epstein’s advice on securing $1 million in funding for his wife’s poetry project.
