Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that he would step back from public life after new emails showing the extent of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein surfaced.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he said in a statement to Business Insider on Monday. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”
Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender known for his elite social circle. In 2019, he killed himself in jail before his trial for sex-trafficking charges, which prosecutors said involved underage girls. Epstein’s social network over the years included prominent politicians and celebrities, including US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew.
The emails, showing years of personal correspondence between the two men, were released by the House Oversight Committee last week. They revealed that Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under Clinton and an advisor to Barack Obama, sought advice from Epstein on how he could romantically pursue a woman he called his mentee.
In a separate exchange, Summers suggested that women have a lower IQ than men. In 2005, similar remarks by Summers about women’s aptitude in mathematics compared with men prompted a public outcry and his resignation as Harvard’s president in 2006.
Summers had long been associated with Epstein. He flew on Epstein’s private plane, according to flight logs obtained by Gawker in 2015, and appeared on Epstein’s 2014 calendar, per scheduling emails obtained by Business Insider in 2023.
In Monday’s statement, Summers added that he will continue to fulfill his teaching duties but will step back from public commitments to “repair relationships with the people closest” to him. He teaches economics at Harvard University.
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on Harvard to sever ties with Summers and put new pressure on the university to hold him accountable.
Warren, who spent nearly two decades teaching at Harvard Law School and has previously sparred with Summers over economic policy, told CNN earlier on Tuesday that Summers’ relationship with Epstein “demonstrates monumentally bad judgment.”
“If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions — or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else,” she told CNN.
Warren’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Summers’ recent work outside Harvard included a post as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a contributor to Bloomberg, and a board member of OpenAI.
CAP confirmed to Business Insider that Summers’ work with the think tank ended. Bloomberg and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
He is married to Elisa New, the host and director of PBS’ “Poetry in America,” and the couple has six children.
