Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and the former president of Harvard University, said he's stepping back from public life after his apparent conversations with Jeffrey Epstein were released last week by the House Oversight Committee.
"I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein," Summers said in a statement on Monday.
Summers is currently a member of Harvard's faculty, according to the Harvard Crimson.
"While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be 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 said.
It has been previously reported that Summers maintained a relationship with Epstein for many years, particularly during Summers’ term as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006.
He flew at least four times on Epstein’s aircraft, according to flight records made public during litigation against Epstein, and he was the top official at Harvard during a time when the university received millions in gifts from Epstein.
All of those gifts were received prior to Epstein’s guilty plea in Florida in 2008 to charges of solicitation of prostitution with a minor, according to the university’s review of its Epstein connections.
"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," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement Monday that was first reported by CNN, calling on Harvard to sever ties with Summers.
"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," the statement further said.
No Epstein survivor has alleged wrongdoing by Summers and there is no public record evidence to suggest Summers was involved in any of Epstein’s crimes. However, the newly released emails suggest a closer bond between the two men than has been previously reported.
The messages just made public include a number of exchanges about dating advice that appear to demonstrate a close relationship between the two that continued long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida, and lasted until at least a few months before Epstein's death in August 2019.
In one March 2019 email exchange, Epstein gives Summers advice, though the context is unclear and the woman involved is not named. “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are,” Summers wrote to Epstein in the lengthy email. “Shes smart. –making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded, in part.
The timing of that exchange between Summers and Epstein is notable, occurring as it did just a few months before Epstein was charged federally in July 2019 with sex trafficking and conspiracy and died by suicide the following month. It also occurred just months after the Miami Herald published an in-depth report in November 2018 about Epstein, calling him a "serial sex abuser" and thrusting him back into the national spotlight.
In other email exchanges, Epstein and Summers at times discuss President Donald Trump, whom Summers referred to in one 2017 email to Epstein as “a clown” who was “increasingly dangerous on foreign policy.”
In another message, from 2018, Epstein appeared to claim he was in contact with someone in the Trump administration. “Want to discuss the Donald at some point” Summers wrote to Epstein in a Dec. 21, 2018, email that also included a number of exchanges about dating advice.
“im in palm beach all weekend,” Epstein replied. “Will u be visiting Mara Lago,” Summers replied in part, referring to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach, Florida, residence and members-only club. “Being asked for 3 names to replace mnuchin,” Epstein responded on Dec. 25, in an apparent reference to Trump’s then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, with whom Trump was said at the time to be becoming frustrated.
In one exchange from two years earlier, an email from the sender “LHS” was sent to Epstein in October 2016, just before Trump won the election, with the question: “How plausible is idea that trump is real cocaine user?" Summers' initials are LHS.
Epstein responded with a different question, asking LHS to arrange a tour of the Harvard campus for someone. “Yes. Let’s briefly discuss. Can u have her write me,” LHS responded.
The newly released documents also include emails between Epstein and Summers’ wife, Elisa New, a professor of American literature.
In one email from 2014, New pitches Epstein on a project she was launching on American poetry and asks for a $500,000 donation. Epstein subsequently donated $110,000 to the project through an entity unaffiliated with Harvard, according to tax documents from an Epstein charitable organization.
In a May 2023 story in The Wall Street Journal regarding Epstein that included reporting on his relationship with Summers, a spokesperson for New and Summers said New “regrets accepting funding from Epstein,” and that New’s nonprofit later made a contribution “exceeding the amount received, to a group working against sex trafficking.”
It also said that Summers "deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction."
In a 2020 Harvard University report on its association with Epstein, the school found that Epstein had donated more than $9 million to support faculty and programs at Harvard.
The largest donation was a $6.5 million gift in 2003 to Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, the report said, a program that was established by Summers following a proposal from Epstein and a Harvard mathematics professor.
Harvard also twice admitted Epstein as a "Visiting Fellow” in the psychology department -- a title typically awarded by Harvard to independent researchers -- during Summers’ time as the university's president.
“Epstein lacked the academic qualifications Visiting Fellows typically possess, and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue,” the Harvard report said. It also noted that Epstein “did little to pursue his proposed course of study as a Visiting Fellow.”
Summers’ connections to Epstein are also detailed in documents previously obtained by ABC News.
Some of Epstein’s schedules show he had plans with Summers a number of times throughout 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. The records of Epstein’s schedules were included in litigation between the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands and JPMorgan Chase and were obtained by ABC News through a public records request.
On Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014, for example, Summers was listed under “people to see” alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, private equity investor Leon Black, and numerous others.
A year prior, in September 2013, Epstein’s calendar reflected that he was having dinner with Bill and Melinda Gates in New York, noting they were “to arrive at the house” at 7:30 and for dinner at 8 p.m. "Larry & Lisa Summers are invited– waiting for reply," the calendar entry also read. Another dinner with Summers was listed in April 2014 in Massachusetts.
In 2011, Epstein’s calendar listed a 9 p.m. dinner “w/ Bill Gates and Larry Summers and Jes Staley,” the latter referring to the then-JP Morgan executive. Ten years later, Staley resigned as CEO of Barclays in the midst of investigations into his association with Epstein. Other names that appear on the Epstein schedules include venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, filmmaker Woody Allen, and attorney Kathryn Ruemmler, who at one time served in the White House counsel’s office for Barack Obama.
A 2023 Wall Street Journal report quotes a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, for which Ruemmler currently works, saying that Ruemmler's association with Epstein was professional and that Epstein introduced her to potential legal clients. “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Ruemmler said, according to the spokesperson.
Summers' first known flight on Epstein’s aircraft was in 1998, when he was the deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. According to the flight logs, the plane took off from Aspen, Colorado, and landed at Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C.
Summers is also listed as a passenger once in 2004 and twice in 2005, including one flight that took off from Bedford, Massachusetts, and landed in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
That December 2005 flight listed Summers and his wife as passengers, who were married ten days earlier at a ceremony held at his residence on Harvard’s campus.
The only other passenger listed on that flight was “GM,” a typical shorthand Epstein’s pilots used to denote Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting and grooming the underage girls whom Epstein sexually abused.