WASHINGTON – APRIL 09: Lawrence Summers, Director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, participates in a question-and-answer session during a luncheon with the Economic Club of Washington at the J.W. Marriott April 9, 2009 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Larry Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, will be stepping back from the public eye following the publication of emails he exchanged with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The emails revealed a close relationship between the two.
Summers, who previously served as the president of Harvard University, sent a statement to The Harvard Crimson, saying, “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused.”
About Larry Summers
Summers was born on November 30, 1954, to two economists (he is also the nephew of two Nobel laureates in economics). He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. He later became a professor of economics at Harvard.
Summers is perhaps best known for serving as Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under Clinton. Before that, he served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Robert Rubin.
Summers famously led the Clinton Administration’s successful opposition to tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress in 1999, arguing that they would undermine the economy. Instead, Summers stressed debt reduction as the best way to ensure long-term growth. He advocated for targeted, limited tax relief rather than a broad tax rate cut. However, opponents argue that resisting the tax cuts in 1999 strengthened the political case for the far larger 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts.
During Summers’ time as Secretary, the U.S. federal budget achieved a surplus. According to his biography, Summers is “the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus.” Since 2001, every federal budget has seen a deficit. The federal government spent $7.01 trillion and collected $5.23 trillion in revenue, resulting in a deficit of $1.78 trillion in the 2025 fiscal year (which ended September 30, 2025).
Also under Summers’ watch, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was passed in 1999, allowing banks, securities firms, and insurers to consolidate. Summers touted that it would modernize the country’s financial system and argued that it increased the competitiveness of U.S. financial institutions around the world. Not everyone was a fan. Critics said that allowing the mergers of companies and industries would lead to problems. The “too big to fail” mentality, they argued, allowed banks to take on more risks without oversight, contributing to the 2008 crisis.
After he left the Treasury, Summers returned to Harvard, this time as the school’s 27th president. He resigned in 2006 after a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, following several conflicts.
Summers eventually returned to public service, serving as the Director of the National Economic Council in the early years of the Obama administration. He is credited with helping to shape the U.S. response to the 2008 financial crisis, including the 2009 Recovery Act, which combined spending and tax credits. The Recovery Act was widely viewed as a success, though some argued that it was too little, too late.
In November 2023, Summers took on another high profile position, joining the board of OpenAI, the company that created and developed ChatGPT. His appointment followed a leadership reshuffle and was seen as a deliberate shift toward bringing more policy and economic experience to the company.
He also continues to teach at Harvard.
The Epstein Connection
During Summers’ tenure as Harvard’s president, Epstein was a major donor. In 2003, Epstein pledged a large gift—estimated at $25–30 million—to support the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics led by Martin Nowak. According to the Harvard Crimson, Nowak said he first met Epstein when former Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Nathan Myrvold introduced the two. The two subsequently formed a friendship, and Epstein frequently funded Nowak’s studies.
In 2020, a formal review found that Epstein made $9,179,000 in gifts to Harvard. Epstein’s gifts to Harvard included $736,000 provided after his 2006 arrest but before his 2008 conviction. The largest of his gifts was a $6.5 million gift made in 2003 to support Nowak’s research. (Harvard accepted no gifts from Epstein after his 2008 conviction.)
In 2005, while Summers was president of Harvard, the university admitted Epstein as a Visiting Fellow in Harvard’s Psychology Department for the 2005-2006 academic year (Visiting Fellow is typically an independent researcher registered as a graduate research student). Epstein applied to be re-admitted as a Visiting Fellow for a second year and Harvard again admitted him. After his arrest, Epstein withdrew as a Visiting Fellow.
Flight records introduced as evidence in the trial of Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, noted that Summers flew on Epstein’s private plane, including in 1998 when Summers was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Additionally, in a batch of emails released by a U.S. House committee, there were numerous messages between Summers and Epstein, including after Epstein had been arrested a second time. According to the Harvard Crimson, Epstein referred to himself in one of those emails as Summers’ “wing man.” At the time, the married Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee and was seeking Epstein’s advice.
2020 Presidential Election
During Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, there was pressure to stop using Summers as an advisor (reports suggested that Summers was advising the campaign on economic policy). Eventually, Summers stated he would not be joining a future Biden administration if Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Biden did go on to defeat Trump, and Summers did not join the administration.
Epstein’s Plea Agreement and Suicide
Epstein was arrested a second time on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. He had been originally arrested in 2006 after a grand jury indicted him in connection with soliciting prostitution and pleaded guilty to state charges in 2008. At that time, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, under Alexander Acosta, negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein, which protected him from prosecution.
(Acosta served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor in Trump’s first term. He resigned in July 2019 after public scrutiny over his handling of the Epstein deal.)
Epstein was in jail awaiting trial on the federal charges when he died by suicide in 2019.
What’s Next
The House is planning to vote on a bill that would force the release of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein. Trump, who previously opposed the measure, now says he would sign it into law if it passes both the House and the Senate.