Summers said she was stepping back from the engagement after emails with Epstein discussing personal and political issues were made public.
Former Harvard University president Larry Summers has apologized and said he will step back from public life after his email exchanges with disgraced investor and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became public.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain it has caused. I take full responsibility for my poor decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers said in a statement published Monday on CBS News.
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“While I continue to fulfill my teaching duties, I will step back from public life as part of a broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with those closest to me,” he said.
The emails are among 20,000 pages of documents obtained from Epstein’s estate and made public last week by the U.S. House Oversight Committee amid continuing questions about the former financier’s ties to President Donald Trump.
Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He was previously convicted of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution of a minor in 2008, but served a lighter sentence of 13 months in prison. Before his fall from power in 2019, Epstein was in constant contact with world leaders, celebrities and public figures like Summers.
The emails between Mr. Epstein and Mr. Summers date from at least 2017 to 2019 and cover a wide range of topics, from U.S. foreign policy to personal matters leading up to the Trump presidency.
In one 2017 email, Mr. Summers advised Mr. Epstein not to engage in reporting about his “friend”, billionaire Thomas Barrack Jr., following a Washington Post article about Mr. Barrack Jr.’s relationships with both Mr. Trump and political lobbyist Paul Manafort.
“A public link to Manafort would be a disaster,” he wrote. “This is an amazing (expletive) show.”
In another email from December 2018, Summers asked Epstein for help securing an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but Epstein appears to have declined.
Mr. Summers previously served as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton and as an advisor to President Barack Obama. She also served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, but was forced to resign over comments suggesting that women are less proficient in math and science than men due to biological differences.
His recent positions include director of OpenAI and distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, according to NBC News. After his retirement, he remained a tenured professor at Harvard University.
More than a decade later, Summers appears to still hold onto his beliefs about women, according to emails with Epstein. In an October 2017 email to Mr. Epstein, he wrote that Mr. Epstein had “argued about inclusivity” over an incident that included “a ton of accusations against Saudi Arabia.”
“I realized that half of the world’s IQ is owned by women, not to mention that women are over 51 percent of the population…” he wrote in an email to Epstein.
In another email from the same month, written at the height of the #MeToo movement, Summers seemed disillusioned by the spate of resignations by U.S. public figures over sexual and personal misconduct.
“I’m trying to understand why America’s elites think that if you beat or abandoned a baby to death, it should have no bearing on your admission to Harvard, but you can’t work for a network or a think tank if you picked up some women 10 years ago,” he said in an email to Epstein.
Other email exchanges from late November to early December 2018 detail Epstein’s relationship with a female colleague and how Summers, then in his mid-60s, should handle the situation.
“For now, consider that I’m not going anywhere with her other than an economics guru. I think I’m in the category of being very warmly in the rearview mirror right now. She didn’t want to have a drink because she was ‘tired.’ I left the hotel lobby somewhat abruptly. “When I reflect, I feel like I’m dodging a bullet,” Summers wrote in a letter to Epstein.
“Smart. Assertive. Clear. Gorgeous. I am (expletive),” Summers wrote in a follow-up email, before concluding that she needed a “cooling off period.”
