Lutnick appeared Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee investigating sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in the latest closed-door session for a high-ranking Trump administration official as lawmakers seek to understand how powerful figures maintained relationships with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, according to the Associated Press.
In the interview, Lutnick tried to explain his contact with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, the AP reported. Lutnick also told lawmakers he has done nothing wrong and welcomed the closed interview, even as lawmakers said they came away with sharply different interpretations of his answers.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Republican, said after the session that Lutnick had been “forthcoming” in describing limited interactions with Epstein. Comer also said the committee planned to later release the transcript and let the public judge whether his credibility was damaged, according to the report.
Democrats, by contrast, accused Lutnick of lying and evading questions. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., said Lutnick “was evasive, nervous. He was dishonest,” and said Lutnick “would not admit to lying, which he clearly did,” AP reported.
The committee’s focus included how Lutnick described his relationship with Epstein at different points in time. Democrats said Lutnick had previously described their contact as “a handful of emails and a pair of meetings in 2011 and 2012” when asked about Epstein earlier this year, but that earlier statements by Lutnick did not align with that account, according to the AP.
The report said Democrats repeatedly pressed Lutnick about Epstein’s private island. In the interview, Democrats said Lutnick told them he remembered little about the island visit and did not see anything that raised concern, and they emerged from the session frustrated, AP reported.
During a break in the interview, Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., said Lutnick “claims that when he said, ‘I would never be in a room again with Jeffrey Epstein,’ he meant only him and Jeffrey Epstein,” the AP reported. The report also said federal Epstein case files released by the government showed email contact between Lutnick and Epstein, including an email in 2018 about a proposed museum expansion and a 2017 dinner honoring Lutnick, along with other contacts such as both investing in the same business venture in 2013.
Lutnick’s defenders and critics also clashed over how he handled prior statements. The AP report said Democrats accused him of backing away from an interview last year in which he called Epstein the “greatest blackmailer ever,” and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Lutnick told him he was “only ‘speculating’” when he made that claim.
One procedural flashpoint was that the committee did not record the interview on video. The AP report said Comer said the decision was consistent with the committee’s practice, pointing out that subjects who consent to an interview may not have to be videoed. Democrats objected that without video, Lutnick could avoid the scrutiny that others received, with Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., arguing that the level of lying “inside that room without video” was “unbelievable and part of this egregious cover-up,” the AP reported.
The White House continued to express support for Lutnick, the AP reported, and the report also said the committee is scheduled to hear testimony May 29 from Pam Bondi, after she was pushed out as attorney general last month.