Larry Summers faces bipartisan scrutiny over years-long ties to Epstein | US news

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are urging companies and institutions to cut ties with Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wingman.”

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said CNN That Summers should be held accountable for his years-long relationship with Epstein. Emails released last week revealed how, in addition to Summers, Epstein maintained contact with other company executives, reporters, academics and political operatives despite pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008.

“Larry Summers has demonstrated his charms for catering to the wealthy and well-connected for decades, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender is indicative of extremely poor judgment,” Warren told CNN. “If he had this little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein despite his public knowledge of Epstein’s sexual crimes against underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions or to teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”

A senior Trump administration official said: Policy He said institutions should end their relationships with Summers, given his relationship with Epstein, who referred to him as Summers’ “wingman” in a November 2018 message.

“It is shocking that Larry Summers remains a paid contributor to Bloomberg News, sits on the board of OpenAI, and serves at Harvard,” an anonymous source told Politico. “What further revelations would need to be made about him and his ‘wingman’ before the institutions would release him? The British government immediately dismissed its ambassador to the US for much less.”

Summers is currently the subject of a new investigation that Donald Trump launched last week. The US president ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch an investigation into several Democrats and institutions after their names were included in recent documents that included emails suggesting that Trump personally knew about Epstein’s behavior.

In conversations from 2013 to early 2019, Summers and Epstein were seen sharing personal views on politics and relationships. Summers lost his position as president at Harvard in 2006 after making sexist comments about female academics, and emails released last week have reignited debate about his relationship with the late sex offender.

“I’m trying to understand why [the] “The American elite thinks that if you kill your baby by beating and abandoning it should be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,” Summers wrote to Epstein: “But he hit on several women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS CONCEPTION.”

Summers added: “Half of IQ [the] The world was in the hands of women, without mentioning that they made up more than 51 percent of the population.”

Other emails reveal that Summers turned to Epstein for romantic advice. In November 2018, Summers appeared to forward an email from a woman asking for Epstein’s advice on when to write back.

“I think it would probably be appropriate to not respond for a while,” Summers wrote. Epstein replied: “Already starting to look needy 🙂 nice.”

summers repeated He expressed his regret for the Harvard Crimson last week.

“I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my involvement with Jeffrey Epstein was a gross error of judgement.”

The university newspaper also reported: Harvard professors are outraged That’s according to revelations from a batch of emails released last week.

“The intimate friendship between Epstein and Summers on display in the emails is disgusting and embarrassing,” statistics professor Joseph K Blitzstein told the Crimson.

The relationship between Summers and Epstein has been reported before. Wall Street Journal in 2023. According to the publication, Summers asked Epstein for advice in 2014 on obtaining $1 million in funding for his wife’s poetry project.