Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Wednesday he is resigning from the board of OpenAI and leaving a number of other roles after last week’s release of emails between him and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“In line with my announcement to step away from my public commitments, I have also decided to resign from the board of OpenAI,” Summers said in a statement.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company and look forward to following their progress,” he said.
Summers said earlier this week that he will be stepping back from “public commitments” after dozens of messages between him and Epstein were included in a trove of documents from Epstein’s estate that was released by the House Oversight Committee last week.
His other departures include positions with Bloomberg News, The New York Times, the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, the Center for American Progress, the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Yale Budget Lab.
Summers joined the OpenAI board in 2023.
The emails showed Summers and Epstein communicated regularly during the last years of Epstein’s life, even as the accused sex trafficker’s public infamy and notoriety grew. Many of the messages were from the late 2010s, well after Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in Florida, but before he was charged with sex trafficking in federal court and taken into custody in July 2019.
The exchanges between Summers and Epstein include one in which they appeared to banter about a woman Summers knew in London, with Epstein seeming to offer him advice.
There is no evidence of illegal conduct on the part of Summers.
Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, was a key economic adviser in the Obama administration. The former president of Harvard University, Summers was teaching two classes at the school.
In a statement on Wednesday, Harvard said it is “conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted.”
On Tuesday, both the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to require the Justice Department to release its files related to Epstein, sending the bill to President Trump’s desk. Mr. Trump called on the Justice Department last week to investigate Epstein’s relationships with Summers, former President Bill Clinton and other high-profile Democrats.
Epstein was facing sex trafficking charges when he died by suicide at New York City jail in 2019. He pleaded guilty in 2007 to two prostitution counts in a Florida court as part of a controversial deal to avoid federal charges.
