‘Deeply Ashamed’: Larry Summers Steps Away from Public Life After Epstein Emails Released

Lar­ry Sum­mers — for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary under Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and for­mer Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent — announced he is step­ping back from pub­lic life after new­ly released com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Jef­frey Epstein became pub­lic last week through 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 Mon­day.

Sum­mers, who remains a mem­ber of Harvard’s fac­ul­ty, added that while he would con­tin­ue teach­ing, he would with­draw from pub­lic engage­ments “as one part of my broad­er effort to rebuild trust and repair rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple clos­est to me.”

It has long been known that Sum­mers main­tained a rela­tion­ship with Epstein, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing his tenure as Har­vard pres­i­dent from 2001 to 2006. Flight records show he trav­eled on Epstein’s plane at least four times, and Har­vard received mil­lions of dol­lars in dona­tions from Epstein dur­ing Sum­mers’ lead­er­ship — all before Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Flori­da for solic­i­ta­tion of pros­ti­tu­tion with a minor.

Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren called on Har­vard to cut ties with Sum­mers after the release of the emails, crit­i­ciz­ing his past will­ing­ness to “cozy up to a con­vict­ed sex offend­er” and say­ing such judg­ment calls made him unfit to advise pol­i­cy­mak­ers or teach stu­dents.

No Epstein sur­vivor has accused Sum­mers of wrong­do­ing, nor is there any pub­lic evi­dence link­ing him to Epstein’s crimes. But the new­ly dis­closed emails reveal a clos­er rela­tion­ship than pre­vi­ous­ly known, includ­ing exchanges about dat­ing advice and occa­sion­al com­men­tary on Don­ald Trump.

One March 2019 email shows Sum­mers and Epstein dis­cussing a woman Sum­mers appeared to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with. Epstein joked she might be “mak­ing you pay for past errors,” in a mes­sage sent just months before Epstein was arrest­ed and died in fed­er­al cus­tody.

Oth­er emails includ­ed ref­er­ences to Trump, with Sum­mers call­ing him “a clown” who was becom­ing “increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous on for­eign pol­i­cy.” In 2018, Epstein appeared to sug­gest he was in con­tact with some­one in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, claim­ing he was asked to pro­vide “three names to replace Mnuchin,” then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary.

Emails also show Epstein inter­act­ing with Sum­mers’ wife, Har­vard pro­fes­sor Elisa New, who pitched Epstein on a poet­ry project in 2014. Epstein sub­se­quent­ly donat­ed $110,000 through a non-Har­vard enti­ty. New has said she regrets accept­ing the fund­ing and lat­er made a larg­er con­tri­bu­tion to an anti–sex traf­fick­ing orga­ni­za­tion.

A 2020 Har­vard review doc­u­ment­ed that Epstein donat­ed over $9 mil­lion to Har­vard pro­grams, includ­ing a $6.5 mil­lion gift in 2003 that helped launch the Pro­gram for Evo­lu­tion­ary Dynam­ics — approved under Sum­mers’ pres­i­den­cy after dis­cus­sions between Epstein and fac­ul­ty.

Har­vard also admit­ted Epstein twice as a “Vis­it­ing Fel­low” in the psy­chol­o­gy depart­ment dur­ing Sum­mers’ admin­is­tra­tion, despite Epstein lack­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions typ­i­cal­ly required for the title.

Epstein’s per­son­al sched­ules, pre­vi­ous­ly obtained in lit­i­ga­tion involv­ing the U.S. Vir­gin Islands and JPMor­gan Chase, show meet­ings planned with Sum­mers across sev­er­al years from 2011 to 2014, often list­ing oth­er high-pro­file fig­ures includ­ing Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Leon Black, and Jes Sta­ley.

Sum­mers’ ear­li­est known flight on Epstein’s plane dates back to 1998, when he served as deputy Trea­sury sec­re­tary. Lat­er logs list flights in 2004 and twice in 2005, includ­ing one trip to St. Thomas short­ly after Sum­mers mar­ried his wife, Elisa New. Ghis­laine Maxwell — marked as “GM” on the logs — was the only oth­er pas­sen­ger list­ed on that flight.

Sum­mers main­tains that he regrets all con­tact with Epstein after his 2008 con­vic­tion.