Former Harvard University President Larry Summers has said he will step back from public commitments after his emails with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein were made public.
“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 obtained by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.
Emails released by Congress last week show Summers, a former US Treasury Secretary, communicated with Epstein up until the day before Epstein’s 2019 arrest for sex trafficking minors.
Files related to Epstein continue to roil Congress with a vote on their release scheduled for Tuesday.
The move comes after the US Justice Department announced that it would investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with former President Bill Clinton, who was also a friend of Epstein, and several other prominent Democrats.
The justice department’s decision comes after urging from Trump, who also asked for Summers to be investigated, as well as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and banks JP Morgan and Chase.
“Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!” he wrote on social media.
“They all know about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”
Clinton has strongly denied he had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Summers served as Treasury secretary under Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama. He was president of Harvard Univesity from 2001 to 2006 and is currently a professor at the university.
In Summers’ statement on Monday night, he said he wanted “to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me”.
“While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort”, he said.
The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington where Summers was a senior fellow, announced on its website on Monday that he is no longer affiliated with the center.
The emails released by the House Oversight Committee last week indicate that Summers and Epstein met for dinner frequently, with Epstein often trying to connect Summers to prominent global figures. At one point, in July 2018, Epstein proposed a meeting with the “president [sic] of united nations, interesting person for you”.
In a separate email just after US President Trump’s first election in 2016, Summers told Epstein to “spend zero effort on anything about me with Trump”.
Due to Trump’s “approach to conflict of interest”, Putin “proximity”, and “mindless response” to Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s death, Summers said he was “best off a million miles away”.
A representative for Summers had previously told US media that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction” in 2008 for soliciting an underage prostitute.
The emails include many high-profile figures. A review by The Wall Street Journal found that Trump was mentioned in more than 1,600 of the 2,324 email threads.
Trump was a friend of Epstein’s for years, but the president has said they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. While he was discussed in some of the messages released this week, he did not send or receive them.
