Larry Summers will step back as relationship with Epstein revealed

The former president of Harvard regularly emailed with Jeffrey Epstein from 2017 until his death, according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers at his home in Brookline on June 22, 2021. David Degner/The New York Times

Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University, said he will be “stepping back” from public commitments as some of his regular email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein became public.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said in a statement Monday, according to The Boston Globe. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”

Summers will continue fulfilling his teaching obligations, he said, while “stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.” He previously served as the Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration and director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama.

His statement came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, called on Harvard to distance itself from its former president and prominent economics professor.

“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,” Warren told CNN, “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.”

Summers and Epstein regularly emailed between 2017 and 2019, sometimes sending multiple emails per day, discussing President Donald Trump and a woman, according to the documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Epstein had already pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18 in 2008.

“Is trump getting crazier as many of my pals think or is it steady crazy,” Summers asked Epstein in 2018.

In 2019, Summers recounted an interaction with a woman to Epstein, who encouraged Summers to “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy.”

“I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are,” Summers recounted. “Tone was not of good feeling. I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”

“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote. “you reacted well.. Annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strength.”

In another exchange in 2017, Epstein told Summers he would “endeavor to mesmerize” him “with stories of D.C. so wild.”

“I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank,” Summers wrote in reply. “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

Communication between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein from 2017 released by the House Oversight Committee.

Warren and Summers, both Harvard economists, have publicly disagreed over policy, with Warren part of an effort to keep Summers from landing the role as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2013.

“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren told CNN.

Harvard University did not immediately return a request for comment Monday evening.