A prestigious group for economic scholars banned disgraced ex-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers for life on Tuesday over his ties to the dead pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The American Economic Association said on Tuesday that it had accepted the 71-year-old’s resignation after Congress released emails that showed Summers remained friends with the sex offender after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor — at one point even asking Epstein for dating advice.
The Nashville-based nonprofit said it had permanently revoked Summers’s membership, but added that it has also immediately blacklisted the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton from all of its work.
“In addition, effective immediately, the AEA has imposed a lifetime prohibition on Mr Summers’ attending, speaking at, or otherwise participating in AEA-sponsored events or activities, including serving in any editorial or refereeing capacity for AEA journals.
“The AEA condemns Mr Summers’ conduct, as reflected in publicly reported communications, as fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity and with the trust placed in mentors within the economics profession,” the organization said in a statement.
It is the latest humiliating blow to the Obama and Clinton administration alum, who has effectively been exiled from public life after it emerged he honeymooned on the pervy banker’s Caribbean island and travelled on the so-called ‘Lolita Express’.
This newspaper broke the exclusive news nearly two weeks ago that the disgraced professor had been forced out of his consulting gig at uber-woke hedge fund DE Shaw.
Summers has also stepped back from his teaching role at Harvard University and resigned from his board position at OpenAI.
The one-time Harvard president flew to Saint James on Epstein’s infamous “Lolita Express” with his wife, Elisa F. New, shortly after their Dec. 11, 2005, wedding in Cambridge.
They were accompanied by the disgraced financier’s infamous British madam, the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted on sex trafficking charges.
Epstein’s jet got its name because it was allegedly used to traffic young girls to his Caribbean hideaway, where he would often invite America’s rich and famous for extravagant parties away from the gaze of the paparazzi.
But Summer’s honeymoon break came six months after Palm Beach police began investigating Epstein for the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl, with a search warrant later executed on his mansion in October 2005.
Flight logs show Summers flew to the 72-acre Caribbean island on Dec. 21, 2005 and took Epstein’s jet, allegedly used to ferry victims and accomplices in his sex-trafficking rings, three other times.
The messages released by a Dem-led congressional oversight panel also show the two men appeared to have had a close relationship right up to Epstein’s arrest in July six years ago.
The pair often discussed women, politics and Harvard-related business in hundreds of emails exchanged between 2013 and 2019, according to the treasure trove of messages.
In one missive, Summers joked that women were less intelligent than men.
“I observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population,” Summers wrote Epstein in October 2017, without providing further context.
In another online back-and-forth in March 2019, Summers asked Epstein for romantic advice.
“I dint [sic] want to be in a gift-giving competition while being the friend without benefits,” Summers told Epstein while discussing his pursuit of a woman, adding that “she must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off but wants professional connection a lot and so holds to it.”
Summers’ fall from grace in the economic community has been substantial since those messages were released.
A constant presence in economic debates over many years and a confidant of presidents, he was one of the youngest people to gain tenure at Harvard.
