Lutnick Acknowledges Traveling to Epstein’s Island

The commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, acknowledged at a Senate hearing that he and his family visited Jeffrey Epstein on his private island.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged in a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he had traveled to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and had another encounter with Mr. Epstein, years after Mr. Lutnick claimed to have cut ties with him.

Mr. Lutnick, a member of President Trump’s cabinet, is one of the highest-profile political figures in the United States to come under intense scrutiny stemming from millions of new documents that were released by the Justice Department last month.

The files revealed that Mr. Lutnick, who had been a neighbor of Mr. Epstein, continued correspondence with Mr. Epstein long after the disgraced financier had been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. The records and Tuesday’s testimony contradict Mr. Lutnick’s assertion on a podcast last year that he had been so disgusted by Mr. Epstein during a 2005 visit to his townhouse that Mr. Lutnick never set foot in a room with Mr. Epstein again. There had been calls for Mr. Lutnick’s resignation even before he gave his testimony.

“Secretary Lutnick remains a very important member of President Trump’s team and the president fully supports the secretary,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday.

Mr. Epstein, who was convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor, died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while being held on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Mr. Lutnick’s name appeared in more than 250 documents in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, a review by The New York Times found.

In a statement, a Commerce Department spokesman said Mr. Lutnick and his wife met Mr. Epstein in 2005 and had “very limited interactions with him” over the ensuing years.

The spokesman said that scrutiny of Mr. Lutnick by the news media was an attempt to “distract from the administration’s accomplishments.”

The previously scheduled hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee was meant to address the Commerce Department’s role in building U.S. broadband networks. But Democrats took the opportunity to question Mr. Lutnick and his ties to Mr. Epstein, which came to light in the Justice Department’s recently released files.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, accused the secretary of misrepresenting the extent of his contact with the convicted sex offender, saying Mr. Lutnick’s prior claims were, “at best, highly misleading.”

The inconsistencies of Mr. Lutnick’s accounts called into question his fitness for office and his statements to Congress, Mr. Van Hollen added.

Mr. Lutnick defended himself, saying he had “nothing to hide” and insisting he’d had only limited interactions with Mr. Epstein over the years.

Mr. Lutnick said he first met Mr. Epstein when they became neighbors in Manhattan in 2005, but that they met only twice more over the next 14 years that he could recall.

“I did not have anything you could call a relationship, anything you could call an acquaintance,” Mr. Lutnick said. “I literally met him three times over 14 years.”

“I know — and my wife knows — that I have done absolutely nothing wrong in any possible regard,” he said, adding, “I have nothing to hide, absolutely nothing.”

At the heart of the questions was a podcast interview from October in which Mr. Lutnick said that he had decided not to associate with Mr. Epstein in 2005, after Mr. Epstein alluded to his sexual encounters with women while giving Mr. Lutnick and his wife a tour of his house.

“My wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” Mr. Lutnick said on the podcast, “Pod Force One.” “So I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy.”

But on Tuesday, Mr. Lutnick admitted to senators that he not only met with Mr. Epstein after that encounter, but he and his family visited him on his private Caribbean island, Little St. James.

Mr. Lutnick confirmed that he and his family traveled to the island in 2012 for a lunch with Mr. Epstein. He portrayed it as a stop-off from a family vacation he was taking aboard his yacht with his wife, children, nannies and another family. The visit took place four years after Mr. Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor as part of a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.

The files also contain documents showing that Mr. Epstein expressed an interest in 2013 in meeting Mr. Lutnick’s nanny and had her résumé sent to him. Mr. Lutnick said Tuesday that he did not know if the nanny had met Mr. Epstein, or if she was one of the nannies Mr. Lutnick had brought to the island, adding he “had no idea what that was about.”

Democrats said the incident raised questions about Mr. Lutnick’s credibility and integrity. The commerce secretary has faced some calls to resign over the issue. Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, said on Sunday that other public figures had stepped down over more limited ties with Mr. Epstein.

Michael Rothfeld and Tony Romm contributed reporting.

Related Content