Lutnick sought to clean up Epstein revelations in closed testimony to House committee

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in closed-door testimony to Congress refuted accusations that he maintained a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein years after he claimed he had cut ties.

Lutnick, who has faced harsh criticism for his ties with the convicted sex offender as part of a global reckoning sparked by the release of long-sealed documents, told the House Oversight Committee that his conflicting statements weren’t intentional, according to a transcript released Wednesday.

The commerce secretary, who previously was CEO of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald, had said in a podcast interview that he cut ties with Epstein in 2005 — a fact contradicted in the documents released by the Justice Department under a law passed by Congress.

“I was describing 20 years later a conversation I had with my wife. It was informal. It wasn’t trying to be literal,” Lutnick said of his comments on the New York Post podcast last year.

Documents within the files released by the Justice Department showed that Lutnick and his family visited the sex offender’s island in 2012 — about four years after Epstein’s conviction in Florida on charges that included soliciting prostitution from a minor.

That contradicted his podcast interview in which he said he had known for years that Epstein was a “disgusting person” and he would “never be in the room” under any circumstances.

But he told the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the Epstein case, that he wasn’t being literal, according to the transcript.

“It was trying to tell a story and be descriptive, which I thought was an accurate description, which was that I would avoid establishing a professional and personal relationship with him,” he said.

The Commerce secretary’s interview with Congress was unusual, in part, because he was questioned by a panel led by his own party. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had threatened to force a subpoena vote for his testimony, before the Oversight Committee announced that he would appear voluntarily.

The politics of Lutnick’s interview are also complicated by the fact that the Trump administration has been repeatedly attacked for ties between the president and Epstein, who died in jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

During the interview, Lutnick declined to discuss whether he had spoken with President Donald Trump about Epstein.

Lutnick claimed that he had “virtually nonexistent interactions” with Epstein, who became his next-door neighbor when he moved into a renovated New York City home in 2005. That year, he and his wife had been invited to Epstein’s home for coffee.

“During this brief interaction that included my wife, me, and this individual, he made a crude and gross remark in my wife’s presence, which caused us to cut the visit short and leave,” he recalled.

Epstein led Lutnick and his wife on a tour of his home, showing them a table where he told them he would get the “right kind of massage,” the Commerce secretary told the committee.

At that point, Lutnick and his wife vowed not to “establish a personal or professional relationship” with Epstein, he said.

Lutnick later met with Epstein in 2011 at the request of Epstein’s office to discuss, from what he could recall, scaffolding. About 18 months later, Epstein’s staff sent an invitation to the Caribbean island.

“My family of six and another family of six, had a brief, meaningless, and inconsequential lunch and then left,” Lutnick said. “To the best of my recollection, those were the only three occasions in which I interacted with Epstein in person. Each and every one was meaningless and inconsequential.”

The committee also released a transcript of its recent interview with Ted Waitt, the businessman and philanthropist who once dated Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator. Waitt told investigators he met Maxwell and Epstein in November 2003 in Hong Kong and later developed a yearslong romantic relationship with her.

He described Epstein as “off-putting” and said he hesitated to spend time with him, in part, because of Epstein’s previous relationship with Maxwell. And he recalled that in 2010 he brought Maxwell to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

“I can say unequivocally that if I knew then what I know now about Ms. Maxwell, I never would’ve befriended her or allowed her to be around my four children, three of whom are girls and who, at that point, ranged in age from 8 to 14,” Waitt said. “I never would’ve spent 6 years in a romantic relationship with her.”