Trump says he doesn’t know anything about Epstein’s emails
President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he has “no knowledge” of newly released emails that reference Jeffrey Epstein.
The former president of Harvard University and former U.S. Treasury secretary told the university newspaper that he is stepping back from public life to repair personal ties following recent revelations of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On November 12, the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 pages of emails related to the disgraced investor. The treasure included a message indicating that Lawrence Summers, Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006, asked the disgraced investor for relationship advice in 2019.
Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, was ruled a suicide, but he likely sexually abused hundreds of women and girls and trafficked them to other wealthy men.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain it has caused,” the Harvard Crimson quoted Summers as saying in a statement to the paper Monday evening. “I take full responsibility for my poor decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”
Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and director of the Mossabah Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He teaches five courses at the university, including two undergraduate classes, and will remain as director of the center, The Crimson reported.
“While we continue to fulfill our teaching obligations, we will withdraw from public life as part of a broader effort,” his statement continued.
Summers’ decision follows Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently calling on Harvard to sever ties with its former president, who showed “extremely poor judgment.”
“If Summers is so incompetent to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein in the face of public knowledge of his sexual crimes against underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions, nor to teach generations of students at Harvard and other universities,” Warren told CNN in a statement.
President Trump said last week that he had asked the Justice Department and FBI to investigate Democrats associated with Epstein, including Summers, Clinton and JPMorgan Chase.
Released emails show that Mr. Summers corresponded regularly with Mr. Epstein until his arrest in July 2019. Many of Epstein’s wealthy, famous and academic elites have come under fire for continuing to communicate with him despite his 2008 plea of guilty to child prostitution charges in Florida.
