Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told senators on Tuesday that he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Saint James Island with his wife and children in 2012, four years after Epstein pled guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution.
During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Lutnick was asked by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) to confirm whether he visited Epstein’s island as was suggested in email correspondence that was recently made public in the Justice Department’s trove of Epstein files. Lutnick, who previously said that he cut off contact with Epstein after a troubling first encounter in 2005, confirmed on Monday that he had lunch on Epstein’s island in late 2012, alongside his wife and four children and another couple and their children.
“Secretary Lutnick, I think you understand the root of concern here. It’s the way you described, very emphatically, your first encounter with him … [and] said you were disgusted and would never have any contact with him again,” Van Hollen said. “Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island?”
Lutnick replied, “I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across, I was on a family vacation. My wife was with me as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple — they were there as well with their children — and we had lunch on the island. That is true, for an hour, and then we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together.”
Lutnick added that he doesn’t remember “why we did it,” referring to the lunch with Epstein on his island, but said it was false “to suggest there was anything untoward about that.” The Trump official also said that he did not witness anything inappropriate when he was on the island with Epstein.
Lutnick has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein’s crimes. Lutnick said he conducted his own search of Epstein files and found that his name appears in about 10 emails among the millions of pages of documents released by the Justice Department. He added that he would be willing to talk more about sharing his records related to Epstein with Congress.
Epstein-related documents recently made public also appear to show Lutnick’s Wall Street firm emailing Epstein in 2011 in hopes of setting up a meeting. It’s unclear if that meeting took place. Lutnick told senators that he “did not have any relationship with” Epstein, adding, “I barely had anything to do with that person.”
In an interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine last year, Lutnick said that after he and his wife first met Epstein in 2005, he vowed to never be in the same room as him. Lutnick told Devine that after he moved into a house next door to Epstein in New York, Epstein took Lutnick and his wife on a tour of his home. During the tour, Epstein pointed out the massage table “in the middle” of his home and made remarks about getting the “right kind of massage,” prompting Lutnick and his wife to leave, according to Lutnick.
“In the six or eight steps that it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” the Commerce secretary added. “So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn’t going because he’s gross.”
After more came to light on Lutnick’s 2012 visit with Epstein, Democratic lawmakers, along with staunch Trump critic Thomas Massie (R-KY), criticized the Commerce secretary for appearing to change his story.
“It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein. He said he had no interactions with Epstein after 2005, yet we now know they were in business together. Lutnick must resign or be fired. And he must answer our questions,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating Epstein’s crimes and alleged ties to powerful people.
Over the weekend, Massie called on Lutnick to “make life easier on the president … and just resign.”
The White House told The Daily Wire on Tuesday that President Donald Trump remains confident in Lutnick’s ability to lead the Commerce Department.
“President Trump has assembled the best and most transformative cabinet in modern history. The entire Trump administration, including Secretary Lutnick and the Department of Commerce, remains focused on delivering for the American people,” White House Spokesman Kush Desai said.
A Commerce Department spokesman told The Daily Wire, “This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments, including securing Trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker. Mr. and Mrs. Lutnick met Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 and had very limited interactions with him over the next 14 years.”
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