Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has resigned from OpenAI’s board, just days after Congress released a trove of emails between Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including exchanges involving a woman Summers described as his mentee.
Summers, who is also Harvard University’s former president and a current professor, is now facing additional scrutiny. Harvard will open its own investigation into his connections with Epstein, according to The Harvard Crimson. The student newspaper also reports that Summers will temporarily step back from public-facing commitments.
The resignation followed shortly after the House and Senate voted to release the Epstein files. Among the documents were multiple email exchanges between Summers and Epstein from November 2018 to July 2019. In these communications, sent while Summers was married, he described a complex, unequal relationship with a woman he was mentoring, acknowledging the power imbalance.
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In one March 2019 message, Summers wrote that the woman “must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off but wants professional connection a lot and so holds to it.” Epstein, who referred to himself early on as Summers’s “wing man,” repeatedly encouraged Summers to pursue the woman, including suggesting she was “doomed to be with you.”
Additional messages revealed Summers contemplating that his “best shot” at a sexual relationship rested in the woman viewing him as professionally “invaluable and interesting,” saying she “can’t have it without romance/sex.” Epstein advised him to play the “long game” and keep her in a “forced holding pattern.”
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. His ties to high-profile figures like Summers continue to generate intense public and institutional scrutiny.
