{"id":577559,"date":"2025-11-18T04:22:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/577559\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T04:22:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:22:19","slug":"lawrence-summers-to-step-back-from-public-roles-over-ties-to-epstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/577559\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawrence Summers to step back from public roles over ties to Epstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n

Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n

Former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers said he would step back from public commitments after documents showed he asked Jeffrey Epstein for advice on pursuing an extramarital relationship with a female mentee. <\/p>\n

Summers<\/a>, who ran Bill Clinton\u2019s Treasury department and was later president of Harvard University, sent repeated messages to Epstein about a woman codenamed \u201cperil\u201d in 2018 and 2019, according to files released from the late sex offender\u2019s estate last week. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognise the pain they have caused,\u201d Summers said on Monday evening. <\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said he took responsibility for his \u201cmisguided\u201d decision to stay in touch with the paedophile and said he would continue teaching students while stepping back from the public domain. <\/p>\n

Summers is one of the most prominent US macroeconomists of\u00a0recent\u00a0decades, regularly speaking at academic and policy conferences and\u00a0contributing to leading economics journals and news outlets. He is a paid contributor<\/a> at Bloomberg TV and previously wrote for the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

He also sits on the board of OpenAI and remained in that role as of Monday evening, according to the company.<\/p>\n

Ahead of his announcement, senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard law professor, had urged the university to cut ties with Summers, who still teaches at the Ivy League school.<\/p>\n

Summers\u2019 relationship with Epstein<\/a> showed \u201cmonumentally bad judgment\u201d, Warren said, adding he \u201ccannot be trusted to advise our nation\u2019s politicians, policymakers and institutions \u2014 or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Harvard Crimson first reported<\/a> on the messages between Summers and Epstein over the woman the former Treasury secretary was interested in. <\/p>\n

The Economic Club of New York had been due to host a discussion with Summers this week but said it was postponing it just hours after the Crimson published its article. <\/p>\n

The club told the FT the session was \u201cpostponed due to an unavoidable change in schedule\u201d. <\/p>\n

Summers revived the economic concept of \u201csecular stagnation\u201d to describe the shift of advanced economies towards low growth. He was one of the first economists to predict that the government stimulus under then-president Joe Biden in response to the Covid-19 pandemic would trigger inflation.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

His decision came amid a deepening scandal in Washington over Epstein\u2019s contacts with senior US establishment figures, including President Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A cache of files released last week by members of the US House oversight committee included a document in which Epstein said Trump \u201cspent hours at my house\u201d with a woman later identified as a victim of sex trafficking. <\/p>\n

More documents could be published in the coming weeks if Congress votes to compel the justice department to release its Epstein files.<\/p>\n

Summers had already faced criticism for his links with Epstein. He previously said he regretted his relationship with the paedophile, who died in jail in 2019. But the new revelations cast light on the personal nature of their contact. Summers has been married since 2005. <\/p>\n

The tranche of files released last week included messages in which Summers lamented to Epstein that he was \u201cgoing nowhere\u201d with a woman he was interested in \u201cexcept economics mentor\u201d and that she had not wanted to have a drink with him \u201ccuz she was \u2018tired\u2019\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m reflective I think I\u2019m dodging a bullet\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Think right thing is to cut off contact. Suspect she will miss it. Problem is I will too,\u201d Summers wrote in a message to Epstein in November 2018. <\/p>\n

The following day Summers wrote the woman had been \u201cSmart Assertive and clear Gorgeous\u201d at a conference and concluded: \u201cI\u2019m fucked\u201d. <\/p>\n

Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and charged with sex trafficking of minors. He had previously served 13 months in a Florida county jail as part of a 2008 plea deal that let him avoid federal charges by pleading guilty to state offences, including procuring a child for prostitution.<\/p>\n

The FT last week reported Summers in 2017 asked Epstein, \u201cHow is life among the lucrative and louche?\u201d He also told the sex offender he had said at a conference \u201cthat half the IQ In the world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 per cent of population\u201d.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor in Washington <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-577559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115568794094150353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}