In an astonishing development, the recently revealed close ties to deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have proven toxic to the career of at least one prominent Democratic figure.

Former Harvard President Larry Summers, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, was just forced out of a lucrative consulting gig with a top Wall Street investment firm, DE Shaw, according to the New York Post.

That move, which followed Summers' resignation or stepping down from other jobs this week, came in reaction to released emails that exposed his once-tight relationship to the disgraced Democratic financier Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Fired from his Wall Street consulting gig

The Post learned from two anonymous sources on Friday that Summers, 70, had been let go from his position as a highly paid consultant for DE Shaw, a top New York-based hedge fund managing around $70 billion in assets, with one source telling the outlet, "They just terminated him."

Summers, who has worked intermittently for the firm since 2006, had still been listed as an adviser as early as Friday morning, but questions were raised when an email from a Post reporter to Summers' address at the firm bounced back with no response.

Later in the day, an unnamed spokesperson for DE Shaw confirmed that Summers, who was once heralded as a "marquee hire" for the investment group, "is no longer a consultant to the firm."

On leave from Harvard, forced to resign from OpenAI

The termination from DE Shaw is just the latest in a series of likely career-ending developments this week for Summers, a formerly well-regarded top economist who served as former President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, as former President Barack Obama's chief economics adviser, as the leading economist at the World Bank, and as a former president and tenured professor at Harvard University.

According to NBC News, it was announced on Wednesday that Summers would "step aside" from his teaching position at Harvard, for at least the current and next semesters, and would also take leave from his role as director of the school's Center for Business and Government, while the university investigated the prior connections of him and other faculty members to Epstein.

A spokesperson for the university confirmed to the outlet that Summers was being closely scrutinized and that the school was "conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted."

That was a stark change from Summers' initial statement on Monday in response to the revelation of his close ties to Epstein, when he insisted that he would continue teaching at Harvard even as he planned to voluntarily end his "public commitments."

The movement at Harvard also came just hours after Summers announced that he had resigned from the board of directors for OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence technology firm.

Close ties to Epstein exposed

All of the sudden upheaval for Summers came in the wake of the release by the House Oversight Committee of thousands of documents and emails obtained from Epstein's estate, which included dozens of friendly messages between the two over the years, with many coming long after it was known that Epstein was a convicted sex offender with a predilection for minor girls.

The conversational emails often featured shared jokes or Summers seeking advice on women from Epstein, and notably, the last email in the series was sent just one day before Epstein was arrested and indicted for sex trafficking in July 2019.

It also follows the shocking revelation from The Harvard Crimson that the university's former president had spent at least part of his 2005 honeymoon with his then-wife on Epstein's infamous private island in the Caribbean -- which occurred before Epstein was convicted but after an initial federal investigation had been launched into his despicable behavior with young girls.