Harvard University professor Lawrence Summers, a former treasury secretary and Harvard president, announced that he would be stepping back from all of his public commitments after emails released by House Republicans revealed that he communicated regularly with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2018 and 2019.

Summers, who has been married since 2005, apparently turned to Epstein for advice over how to romance a woman he described as his mentee. Epstein, in turn, described himself as Summers’s “wing man.” The two corresponded by email and text up until the day before Epstein was arrested in 2019.

The correspondence was first reported Monday by the Harvard Crimson in an article which laid out the unusual nature and frequency of the interactions between the two men.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers said in a statement on Monday. “While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”

Last week, President Donald Trump asked the Justice Department to review Epstein’s relationship with Summers as part of a probe into the sex offender’s connections with a number of prominent Democrats, including the former president Bill Clinton. The Epstein files have proven a major headache for the administration, which has fought efforts to force their release until a reversal Sunday, when Trump posted on Truth Social that “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax.”

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