Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers has said he is stepping back from public life as emails showed he continued to communicate with Jeffrey Epstein after the paedophile financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Mr Summers, a former president of Harvard University, kept in touch with Epstein after the billionaire financier pleaded guilty in 2008, emails released last week showed.

The Harvard professor said in a statement sent to the university’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and other media outlets on Monday that he wanted to “rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me”.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognise the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein,” he said.

Epstein took his own life in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.

In an email that year, Mr Summers asked Epstein for guidance in relation to a woman with whom he was trying to start a relationship.

In the message, Mr Summers wrote: “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are.”

Epstein, who often wrote with spelling and grammatical errors, replied: “You reacted well.. annoyed shows caring. , no whining showed strentgh.”

Their correspondence was among thousands of Epstein emails published by the US House of Representatives.

When asked about the emails last week, Mr Summers said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that his association with Epstein was a “major error in judgement”.

The emails showed many in Epstein’s vast network of wealthy and influential friends continued to stay in touch long after his 2008 guilty plea.

Mr Summers, a Democrat who served as treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 under former US president Bill Clinton and National Economic Council director under former US president Barack Obama, would continue to teach, he said.

According to his website, he teaches several economics courses at the prestigious US university, where he was president for five years from 2001.

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He is also a director of the school’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and serves on the board of OpenAI.

Sky News has contacted Harvard University for comment.

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Current US President Donald Trump called on Sunday for all the files to be released, a change of tack after he earlier dismissed the matter as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Democrats.

Mr Trump is one of a number of high-profile figures, who have been referenced in some of the documents.

The president has consistently denied any involvement or knowledge about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

The White House has said the “selectively leaked emails” are an attempt to “create a fake narrative” to smear Mr Trump.

The House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday on forcing the release of the documents.

On Monday, US attorney general Pam Bondi said she ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein’s ties to Mr Trump’s political enemies, including Mr Clinton.

The most advanced US aircraft carrier has travelled to the Caribbean Sea in what has been interpreted as a show of military power and a possible threat to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro regime.

The USS Gerald R Ford and other warships arrived in the area with a new influx of troops and weaponry on Sunday.

It is the latest step in a military build-up that the Donald Trump administration claims is aimed at preventing criminal cartels from smuggling drugs to America.

Since early September, US strikes have killed at least 80 people in 20 attacks on small boats accused of transporting narcotics in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Mr Trump has indicated that military action would expand beyond strikes by sea, saying the US would “stop the drugs coming in by land”.

The US government has released no evidence to support its assertions that those killed in the boats were “narcoterrorists”, however.

The arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford now rounds off the largest increase in US firepower in the region in generations.

With its arrival, the “Operation Southern Spear” mission includes nearly a dozen navy ships and about 12,000 sailors and marines.

Rear Admiral Paul Lanzilotta, who commands the strike group, said it will bolster an already large force of American warships to “protect our nation’s security and prosperity against narco-terrorism in the Western Hemisphere”.

Admiral Alvin Holsey, the US commander who oversees the Caribbean and Latin America, said in a statement that the American forces “stand ready to combat the transnational threats that seek to destabilise our region”.

Government officials in Trinidad and Tobago have announced that they have already begun “training exercises” with the US military that are due to run over the next week.

The island is just seven miles from Venezuela at its closest point.

The country’s minister of foreign affairs, Sean Sobers, said the exercises were aimed at tackling violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago, which is frequently used by drug traffickers as a stopover on their journey to Europe or North America.

Venezuela’s government has described the training exercises as an act of aggression.

They had no immediate comment on Sunday regarding the arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford.

The US has long used aircraft carriers to pressure and deter aggression by other nations because its warplanes can strike targets deep inside another country.

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Some experts say the Ford is ill-suited to fighting cartels, but it could be an effective instrument of intimidation to push Mr Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the US, to step down.

Mr Maduro has said the US government is “fabricating” a war against him.

The US president has justified the attacks on drug boats by saying the country is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, while claiming the boats are operated by foreign terrorist organisations.

US politicians have pressed Mr Trump for more information on who is being targeted and the legal justification for the boat strikes.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region, said: “This is the anchor of what it means to have US military power once again in Latin America.

“And it has raised a lot of anxieties in Venezuela but also throughout the region. I think everyone is watching this with sort of bated breath to see just how willing the US is to really use military force.”

Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she is ready to mend relations with Donald Trump after a high-profile row between the pair.

The former MAGA ally had accused the president of “coming after me hard” over her efforts to get more Jeffrey Epstein files released.

But writing on X on Sunday, she said forgiveness was a “major part” of her Christian faith.

“I’m here to show how it’s possible to settle our differences and move forward as Americans,” she wrote. “That’s why I’m always willing to go on shows with different viewpoints.

“I truly believe in forgiveness and I am open to moving forward with the President.”

A day earlier, Ms Greene said she was facing threats after a barrage of criticism from Mr Trump – who has called her “wacky”, a “traitor” and a “ranting lunatic”.

Ms Greene claimed “a hotbed of threats” were “being fuelled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”.

However, her attempt to build bridges appears to have fallen flat.

Mr Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday night that she was trying to portray herself as a victim and “nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country!”

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The row began when a petition to vote on the full release of the Epstein files received enough signatures – including Ms Greene’s – to bring it to a vote in the House of Representatives.

Despite his attacks, Trump said on social media on Sunday that “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide…”

High-profile figures, including Mr Trump, have been referenced in some of the documents.

The president has called the Epstein files a “hoax” by the Democrats and has consistently denied any involvement or knowledge about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

The White House has said the “selectively leaked emails” are an attempt to “create a fake narrative” to smear Mr Trump.

Epstein took his own life in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges.