14 views

Nov. 19, 2025, 2:15 PM ESTBy Minyvonne BurkeA former Olympic snowboarder, who officials say runs one of the most violent drug-trafficking organizations in the world, faces new charges related to the murder of a federal witness in the case against him. Officials said Ryan James Wedding “placed a bounty” on the witness’ head “in the erroneous belief that the victim’s death would result in the dismissal of criminal charges against him and his international drug trafficking ring.” He allegedly used a Canadian website to post images of the witness and his wife to locate him, officials said at a Wednesday news conference. The witness was fatally shot at a restaurant before he could testify against Wedding. In an indictment unsealed on Wednesday, Wedding was charged with murder, witness tampering and intimidation, money laundering and drug trafficking. The new indictment also includes several other people, including a Canadian lawyer, who officials say were involved in the murder. The U.S. Department of State increased its reward from $10 million to $15 million for information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of Wedding, who is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. “You do not get to be a drug kingpin and evade the law,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at the news conference. “Make no mistake about it, Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar; he’s a modern iteration of El Chapo Guzman. … He will not evade justice.” Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said officials believe he’s being protected by the cartel and others in Mexico. “Please understand that he might change his hair color, his appearance, and do anything to avoid capture,” he said. A surveillance photo of Ryan Wedding provided by the FBI.FBIAttorney General Pam Bondi said Wedding’s organization is responsible for importing about 60 metric tons of cocaine a year into Los Angeles via semi-trucks from Mexico.“He controls one of the most prolific and violent drug-trafficking organizations in this world,” she said. “He is currently the largest distributor of cocaine in Canada.” Over the course of the investigation, Bondi said more than 35 people have been indicted, numerous weapons have been seized, about $3.2 million in cryptocurrency has been recovered, and over $13 million in physical assets have been confiscated. According to the FBI, Wedding’s organization often resorted to violence, including orchestrating the murders of multiple people.Wedding, who represented Canada in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, was charged in a September 2024 superseding indictment with attempted murder and other counts. Minyvonne BurkeMinyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.

- Latest News - November 19, 2025

Former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who officials say runs one of the most violent drug-trafficking organizations in the world, faces new charges related to the murder of a federal witness.

TAGS:
12 views

Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleNov. 19, 2025, 1:47 PM ESTBy Sahil KapurWASHINGTON — With a near-unanimous vote in Congress to pass his bill requiring the release of Jeffrey Epstein files, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., can claim a victory that no other Democratic presidential prospect has achieved: cracking the MAGA coalition.Early polls suggest he’d be a heavy underdog if he runs. But the California Democrat has been traveling to swing states and early contests to test the water for a possible White House bid.Khanna, 49, teamed up with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act in July. The bill requires the Justice Department to release its records related to Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who had connections to a number of powerful figures, within 30 days.Khanna and Massie attracted Republican co-sponsors and just enough signatures to end-run House GOP leaders and force a vote, with MAGA luminaries such as Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado supporting the measure.It was a rare bipartisan feat, made more difficult by President Donald Trump, who pushed for months to dissuade Republicans from joining the effort. But in the final days, Trump bowed to what increasingly appeared to be an inevitability, flipping his stance and backing it. Party leaders followed him. Every Republican except one joined unanimous Democrats on Tuesday to vote for the measure on the House floor, sending it to the Senate, which passed it unanimously.In an interview in the speaker’s lobby moments before the House vote on his bill, Khanna told NBC News his project contains the building blocks of a national vision.“Whatever role I have, I hope it’s a role in shaping the national future of the Democratic Party and the country,” he said. “We need to build an enduring coalition around a vision of new economic patriotism that can unite the left and right. And the elements of that are to rail against an elite governing class that has created a system that’s not working for ordinary Americans. And then to offer a concrete vision of how we’re going to prioritize the economic independence and success of those forgotten Americans, as opposed to just this billionaire elite class.”He melded the new effort into his larger left-right message, attacking “the Epstein class that has accumulated power and doesn’t play by the rules and has impunity at the expense of ordinary Americans.”Khanna’s approach is unique among Democrats. He doesn’t quite have the fiery rhetoric of other rumored White House hopefuls such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and he doesn’t have the iconic progressive image of New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Simply put, his willingness to partner with MAGA figures who are detested by liberals may not be a selling point for an angry and fired-up Democratic base.“That’s a criticism I sometimes get,” Khanna quipped.Still, the California Democrat shows his sharp elbows against Republicans at times, most notably positioning himself as a foil to Vice President JD Vance, who’s seen as a potential Republican front-runner in 2028. He’ll often go after him on social media. During a speech in April at Yale Law School, where both Vance and Khanna received their degrees, Khanna drew a comparison between the vice president and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Vance’s office did not return a request for comment.Rep. Ro Khanna says Epstein is a winning issue for Democrats: ‘This is about trust in government’01:23Khanna lacks the national name recognition of other Democrats, including Pete Buttigieg, a former presidential candidate and transportation secretary in the Biden administration, who has also been viewed as a potential 2028 candidate.Not since the 1800s has a House member ascended straight to the presidency; and as an Indian American, Khanna would be looking to make history in more ways than one.But what he has built is a level of trust among Republicans who wouldn’t work with other Democrats. He said he’s done that by “being civil to colleagues” — including some hard-right Republicans — and building trust and partnerships with them, giving them credit, taking his message to “Republican-leaning podcasts” and “treating MAGA voters with respect.”“I have not gotten into Twitter wars with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. I have a real friendship with Thomas Massie,” he said. “They trusted me enough not to make it about Donald Trump — from day one, any press conference we did, anything we did, we talked about it being about the survivors, not political.”Khanna said his insistence on seeing the humanity in those GOP lawmakers, who are top Democratic foes, was key to success.“It was the whole thing,” he added. “If I had engaged in those kind of meme wars and others, there’s no way Massie would have worked with me.”The White House downplayed the Khanna-Massie effort, despite the president fighting it for months, saying Trump had already been “calling for transparency,” on the Epstein files “and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”Khanna has a different vision of bipartisanship than other Democrats, including former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, who sought to find the most moderate Republicans and work with them on noncontroversial goals. By contrast, Khanna tends to look for GOP lawmakers to partner with on populist issues that both the left and the right can sell as a rebuke of an entrenched establishment.He has teamed up with Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., to repeal Trump’s tariffs on coffee, and with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, to propose congressional term limits. He worked with Republicans to advocate for reining in the government’s warrantless surveillance powers under FISA Section 702 and to prevent U.S. military intervention in Yemen.Massie said Khanna’s approach was instrumental in the success of their Epstein measure. He said he saw an opening when Khanna offered an Epstein amendment in the Rules Committee, and “got every Democrat and one Republican to vote for it.”“Ro gave me the idea, whether he meant to or not,” Massie said. “He’s able to put aside the partisan bomb throwing in order to work across the aisle, and he’s really good on TV.”“He was an important element of this,” the Kentucky Republican said. “And it was his idea, really, to organize the survivor press conference. So I don’t know if it would have succeeded with any other Democrat on the other side of the aisle.”Others have nothing to say about Khanna, including Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, who replied, “No comment,” when asked about his role in the Epstein bill.On the House floor before the vote, Khanna thanked his Republican partners on the bill. “The Epstein class is going to go,” he said. “And the reason they’re gonna go is the progressive left and the MAGA right and everyone in between is finally waking up against this rotten system.”In the NBC News interview, Khanna repeatedly invoked President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a guidepost for his populist views and desire to take on wealthy interests, while conceding that his progressive ideals won’t fully upend the MAGA coalition. But he believes he has a better theory of how to engage those voters than some recent — unnamed — Democratic presidential prospects.“Do I think somehow we’re going to win all of Trump’s voters? No. I’m not naive,” he said. “But I think that that has a better shot of winning than we’re just going to do Infrastructure 2.0.”Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.

- Latest News - November 19, 2025

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who is considering a White House run, said his unlikely victory on the Epstein files contains the building blocks of a populist vision that can “unite.

TAGS:
13 views

Nov. 17, 2025, 9:00 PM EST / Updated Nov. 19, 2025, 10:06 AM ESTBy Scott Wong, Melanie Zanona, Kyle Stewart and Brennan LeachWASHINGTON — Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who’ve been leading the push for months.As the final vote tally in the House, 427-1, was read, several Epstein survivors who were sitting in the gallery embraced one another and loud cheers went up through the chamber. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only lawmaker to vote no.Just hours later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., headed to the floor and requested unanimous consent that the measure be passed in the upper chamber once it was received from the House.Not a single senator objected. The bill was sent to President Donald Trump, who has vowed to sign it into law, on Wednesday morning.Epstein abuse survivor Danielle Bensky, left, and Lauren Hersh, National Director of World Without Exploitation, embrace after receiving word that the Senate unanimously approved passage of the measure Tuesday. Heather Diehl / Getty ImagesThe measure, which last week secured enough bipartisan support to head straight to the House floor, got a big boost over the weekend, when Trump reversed his position and urged Republicans to support it.Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — the bipartisan duo who co-authored the legislation and successfully forced the vote on the House floor, despite leadership’s objections — had spent the past few days trying to drive up the vote tally to put pressure on the Senate. The votes in both chambers exceeded their expectations. At a candlelight vigil with Epstein survivors and lawmakers outside the Capitol on Tuesday night, survivor Annie Farmer invoked the memory of Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein survivor and sexual abuse advocate who died by suicide in April at age 41. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was posthumously published last month.“She immediately rallied all of us together and had this vision for what could happen, what people could learn from this, what she wanted to do with this platform and push that forward in such a brave way,” Farmer said, breaking down in tears.“I feel like she’s here with us. I feel like she can see this. So thank you, Virginia, for all that you’ve done for us,” she continued.Epstein survivors speak out ahead of House vote on releasing Epstein files05:26The bill would require the attorney general to release in a searchable and downloadable format “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, flight logs or travel records, people and entities connected with Epstein and internal emails, notes and other internal Justice Department communications. Those records would need to be released “not later than 30 days” after the law is enacted.The legislation says the attorney general may withhold or redact any information that identifies victims or would jeopardize an active federal investigation.Ahead of the House vote, Massie, Khanna and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., held an emotional news conference outside the Capitol with more than a dozen Epstein survivors, urging senators to quickly take up the bill.”You had Jeffrey Epstein, who literally set up an island of rape — a rape island — and you had rich and powerful men, some of the richest people in the world, who thought that they could hang out with bankers, buy off politicians and abuse and rape America’s girls with no consequence,” Khanna told reporters Tuesday.”Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” he added. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning.”Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., outside the Capitol on Tuesday.Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images fileEarlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had been working to persuade the Senate to amend language in the bill to better protect the identities of victims. Higgins, the lone no vote, wrote on X that the bill, as written, could reveal “thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”But Massie urged his fellow Republicans not to “muck it up in the Senate.” And in the end, with such a large vote in the House, no GOP senator dared stand in the way.”We fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win,” Massie said, adding that opponents deserved some “credit” because they ultimately came around to the legislation. “They are finally on the side of justice.”Even after having voted for the bill, Johnson was still fuming over the process hours later. Returning to the Capitol from a White House dinner honoring Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Johnson said, “I’m deeply disappointed in this outcome,” and he lamented that “Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor.” Senate Majority John Thune, R-S.D., didn’t object, despite being aware of Johnson’s concerns.Johnson said he was continuing to have conversations with Trump about those issues. “I’m frustrated with the process,” he said, “but I trust Leader Thune.”Why Trump reversed courseMomentum on the Epstein discharge petition had been building in the House, which allowed rank-and-file members to circumvent leadership and force a vote.All House Democrats were on board, and after half the House signed the discharge petition to force a vote, a deluge of Republicans began announcing they would vote for it.Trump and the White House had worked behind the scenes to stop the effort, trying to pressure a handful of GOP women to drop off the petition.But with the writing on the wall, Trump abruptly reversed course Sunday night, posting on Truth Social that House Republicans should vote for the bill. On Friday, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats and financial institutions.Trump, who had supported releasing the Epstein files before his re-election last year, vowed Monday to sign the legislation should it reach his desk, which he said would allow the GOP to turn the page and focus on the economy.”Some of the people that we mentioned are being looked at very seriously for their relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, but they were with him all the time — I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all,” Trump said in the Oval Office.”What I just don’t want Epstein to do is detract from the great success of the Republican Party, including the fact that the Democrats are totally blamed for the shutdown,” he continued.Standing with fellow Epstein survivors Tuesday, Jena-Lisa Jones lashed out at Trump over the new Justice Department probe.“I beg you, President Trump: Please stop making this political,” Jones said. “It is not about you, President Trump. You are our president. Please start acting like it. Show some class, show some real leadership, show that you actually care about the people other than yourself.”Jones said she voted for Trump. “Your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment,” she said.Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks at news conference with Epstein victims03:55Asked about the criticism, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: “Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”A conservative Trump ally in the House told NBC News that Republicans have been widely frustrated with the White House’s dismissive handling of the Epstein saga and have privately encouraged it to shift strategy — which was communicated as recently as Friday, days before Trump flipped on the issue. The White House was also warned that there would be mass Republican defections on the House floor.Thousands of documents releasedThe Justice Department has already turned over tens of thousands of documents from the Epstein investigation to the House Oversight Committee, which is conducting its own probe and has made many of those records public. In addition, Democrats on the Oversight Committee released a series of emails last week from Epstein to Maxwell and journalist Michael Wolff that refer to Trump, which Epstein’s estate turned over in response to a subpoena. In one 2019 email, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” but he didn’t accuse Trump of any wrongdoing.Trump has consistently denied involvement in any of Epstein’s crimes. The two men had socialized in the 1980s and the 1990s, including at a 1992 party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where video shows them discussing women. But Trump and Epstein had a falling-out in the 2000s, when Trump accused Epstein of hiring away girls and young women from his resort’s spa. Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting prostitution with a minor. In July 2019, the Justice Department charged him with sex trafficking of minors. A month later, authorities said, Epstein killed himself in his jail cell while he was awaiting trial.Johnson has argued for months that the Epstein legislation isn’t needed because the Oversight Committee has been releasing documents to the public. He dodged questions Monday about Trump’s about-face and his conversations with the president.”He’s never had anything to hide. He and I had the same concern — that we wanted to ensure that victims of these heinous crimes are completely protected from disclosure, those who don’t want their names out there,” Johnson told reporters. “And I’m not sure the discharge petition does that, and that’s part of the problem.”Scott WongScott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News. Melanie ZanonaMelanie Zanona is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News.Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.Brennan LeachBrennan Leach is an associate producer for NBC News covering the Senate.Megan Lebowitz, Tara Prindiville and Frank Thorp V contributed.

- Latest News - November 19, 2025

The House overwhelmingly passed legislation to force the Justice Department to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Source link

TAGS:
12 views

Nov. 18, 2025, 2:45 PM ESTBy Jared PerloThe robot warriors are coming, and so are the zillionaires, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned in a wide-ranging interview with NBC News on the rise and risks of artificial intelligence.“I think we are not all that far away from the development of robotic soldiers,” Sanders said Sunday. “Right now, politicians — at least sometimes — have to worry about loss of life when they decide to go to war. If you don’t have to worry about loss of life, and what you worry about is loss of robots, what does that mean for issues of war and peace globally? It’s a big issue.” Sanders is known for his focus on the millionaires and billionaires of the world, and how the U.S. government might favor them. In recent months, he’s turned his attention to AI, which he says is an extension of his primary concerns about wealth inequality.“Today, before we have seen the full implications of robotics and AI, you’re looking at unprecedented wealth and income concentration,” Sanders said. “The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 93%,” he said. “All of these zillionaires — the Musks, the Ellisons, the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs — are investing hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into AI and robotics. What is the result of all that?”Elon Musk, the CEO of xAI, was just approved to receive a pay package from one of his other companies, Tesla, that could make him the world’s first trillionaire. “It will mean even more wealth and even more political power for these guys at the top, while our democracy gets weaker and weaker. Working people will see a significant decline in their standard of living unless we turn this around.”Sanders’ focus on AI comes as tech companies have announced historic AI investments and sought to secure goodwill from President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has prioritized ensuring America’s AI ecosystem is “unencumbered by bureaucratic red tape” to avoid an “onerous regulatory regime,” while also keeping many aspects of the Biden administration’s AI efforts.Sanders is not the only elected official bringing attention to the issue, with rising interest in AI legislation at both the state and the federal levels. On Tuesday, a House subcommittee met to discuss the safety of AI chatbots.In the interview with NBC News, Sanders said he sees the issue as an urgent matter and hopes to provoke more discussion about AI and its potential impacts on society: “The folks who have studied this moment are suggesting this ain’t just another technological revolution. It is a lot more profound, and it’s going to move a lot quicker.”With such a fast-moving and general purpose technology as AI, Sanders sees threats not only to workers, but also to larger notions of humanity. “People are worried that right now, many young people, teenagers, are relying on companionship from AI rather than fellow human beings,” Sanders said. “If kids today have AI as their best friends, as the ‘people’ they relate to, where they spend most of their time rather than other human beings, what kind of change does that mean for humanity?”“We’re talking about incredibly deep, deep issues of what it means to be human,” Sanders concluded. “This issue needs enormous discussion, and I hope we can provoke some of it.”Sanders will hold a town hall with “Godfather of AI” and Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton on Tuesday night at Georgetown University to discuss AI’s trajectory, including its effect on workers. “People who know a lot more than I do about this, people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Dario Amodei, they are talking about massive, massive job dislocation,” Sanders said. “Musk recently said that ‘AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional.’”“But what the hell does that mean if it’s going to replace all jobs? If I’m a factory worker today, if I’m working in an office, how am I going to feed my family? How am I going to pay the rent? Who is talking about that?” Sanders added, also referencing recent claims from Anthropic CEO Amodei that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and increase unemployment by up to 20% in the next one to five years. “There has been far, far, far too little discussion among the American people, in the media and certainly in Congress about the implications of AI and robotics.”In October, Sanders released a report on AI and led a hearing on AI’s potential to support American workers and families. He’s also proposed a limited set of policies that he says could help address some issues posed by AI, including increased employee ownership of companies, a reduced workweek and even a potential robot tax on large corporations, using “the revenue to improve the lives of workers who have been harmed.”Sanders has also proposed that leading American AI company OpenAI should be broken up given its size. In his interview with NBC News, he said his call “was more general” than just OpenAI and meant to implicate several of America’s largest AI companies.“When I talk about breaking these [companies] up, I mean creating a situation where this new technology is designed to benefit ordinary people, not just designed by a handful of billionaires to make them even richer,” he said.“I don’t have a blueprint in my back pocket here, because nobody has ever had to deal with this reality, but the idea that a handful of multibillionaires can determine the future of humanity seems a little bit crazy to me.”Sanders is also criticizing growing efforts by American venture capitalists and deep-pocketed donors to create super PACs designed to lobby against AI regulation. “You’ve got people who are suggesting that it’s almost anti-religious, the Antichrist, to be demanding regulation of AI and robotics right now,” he said, obliquely referencing recent speeches by Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel. In one of these lectures, Thiel said: “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science.” “It almost takes you back to the 1700s and the monarchies throughout Europe,” Sanders said. “Some of these Big Tech guys think that they have a God-given right to rule the world, and the idea that a Congress or ordinary citizens might object to what they are doing, they see as something that is unacceptable.”“So they will put unlimited amounts of money into super PACs to elect candidates who will allow them to do whatever they want. It’s very dangerous.”Asked about increasing cooperation between leading American AI companies and the U.S. military, Sanders highlighted growing concerns about privacy. “How far away are we from a small number of people having access to the email that you’ve sent out, every phone call that you’ve been on, really every aspect of your life? We’re not far.”“Either we’re there right now or we certainly assume we’ll be there. That gives the people on top extraordinary control when they have that knowledge,” he said.Sanders joins a growing and bipartisan group of national politicians focusing on AI. Some, like Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have targeted the societal impacts of AI. Hawley has recently proposed several AI-related bills, including an effort to limit minors’ access to chatbots, a push to better track AI-related layoffs and a mechanism to evaluate AI models’ abilities. Others, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., have proposed bills targeting the export of American AI technology and hardware to China. For his part, Sanders is hoping his voice can help advance the conversation. “I see growing awareness, but I don’t think Congress is moving anywhere near fast enough,” he said. Jared PerloJared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

- Latest News - November 19, 2025

Sen. Bernie Sanders explains why he thinks artificial intelligence poses profound risks for American workers and society at large.

Source link

TAGS:
11 views

Nov. 19, 2025, 8:34 AM EST / Updated Nov. 19, 2025, 10:54 AM ESTBy Minyvonne Burke, Ben Goggin and Daniel ArkinLarry Summers, the former treasury secretary and ex-president of Harvard University, announced Wednesday he would resign from the board of directors at OpenAI amid scrutiny on his connection to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — ties that are now the subject of a new internal investigation at the Ivy League school.“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 Wednesday. “I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress,” he added. Summers has been in the national spotlight following the House Oversight Committee’s publication of more than 20,000 documents from Epstein’s estate, including extensive email exchanges between Summers and Epstein.Summers, who was treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and served as a top economic adviser to former President Barack Obama, joined the board of OpenAI in November 2023. OpenAI’s board of directors said it respected Summers’ decision to resign. “We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board,” the AI giant said in a statement.Summers announced Monday he would step back from public commitments. He said he would continue teaching at Harvard University, where he was president from 2001 to 2006.“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.Harvard, for its part, plans to open an investigation into Summers’ ties to Epstein, a spokesman for the school confirmed to the campus newspaper.In a statement to The Crimson, the student newspaper, university spokesman Jonathan L. Swain said Harvard 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.”Swain did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment Wednesday.The emails show Summers and Epstein communicated as recently as 2019, more than a decade after the financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. They continued to correspond until July 5, 2019, a day before Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors.In one batch of emails, Summers sought Epstein’s advice on his relationship with an unnamed woman. Epstein described himself as a “pretty good wing man.” In another exchange, Summers lamented that men who “hit on” women in the workplace may suffer career repercussions.Summers has not been accused of participating in any of Epstein’s alleged criminal behavior.In the wake of the document release, Summers was named as a target for investigation by President Donald Trump, who was repeatedly named in the trove of communications. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said he ended his friendship with Epstein sometime in the 2000s.In a Truth Social post Friday, Trump wrote that he would ask U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s involvement with prominent Democrats, including Summers and Bill Clinton. Bondi responded to the post on X, writing that she was assigning Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to the matter.Minyvonne BurkeMinyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.Ben GogginBen Goggin is the deputy tech editor for NBC News.Daniel ArkinDaniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.Jared Perlo contributed.

- Latest News - November 19, 2025

Larry Summers announced he is resigning from OpenAI’s board of directors, days after he said he was stepping back from public commitments.

Source link

TAGS: