Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, under questioning from the House Oversight Committee, withdrew a public claim he had made last year that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had engaged in blackmail. The interview, conducted behind closed doors last week and released as a transcript on Wednesday, shows Lutnick saying he was merely “speculating for a podcast” and that his personal interactions with Epstein were “meaningless and inconsequential.”
The reversal directly contradicted the assertion Lutnick made during a podcast appearance, where he said he had been determined to “never be in a room again” with Epstein after a 2005 tour of Epstein’s New York City townhouse that disturbed him and his wife. Facing lawmakers’ scrutiny, Lutnick told the committee, “I had no personal information. I was just speculating for a podcast.”
The transcript details three episodes Lutnick had with Epstein, whom he lived near for years. During the 2005 tour, Epstein showed a massage table and made a sexual innuendo, prompting Lutnick and his wife to decide to avoid him. Yet Lutnick, the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, subsequently had two additional encounters and exchanged several emails with Epstein. In 2011, he made a brief visit to Epstein’s home to discuss scaffolding for Epstein’s townhouse. The following year, while on a family vacation in the Caribbean, Epstein’s staff invited the Lutnicks to lunch on Epstein’s private island. Lutnick described the 2012 visit as uneventful: “We sat outside, had lunch. It was boring. We left.” He said he could not recall why his family had accepted the invitation after the earlier vow to avoid Epstein.
Democrats emerged from the interview accusing Lutnick of dishonesty. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the committee’s top Democrat, called for his resignation, saying on social media, “If a Cabinet Secretary lies to the American public, they should no longer serve in that position. Mr. Lutnick should resign or be fired.” The White House has stood behind Lutnick, who has been part of Trump’s inner circle for years.
The committee also released a transcript of its April interview with Tedd Waitt, the cofounder of Gateway computers, who dated Ghislaine Maxwell in the early 2000s. Maxwell is serving a lengthy prison sentence for helping Epstein traffic girls. Waitt told lawmakers he was unaware at the time that either Epstein or Maxwell was committing sexual abuse and described his interactions with Epstein as “very brief and unintentional,” adding that he found Epstein “somewhat arrogant” and “off-putting.” Waitt said he never visited Epstein’s home, flew on his planes, or visited his private island.
Lutnick’s appearance, together with the Waitt interview, is part of the committee’s broader examination of the networks surrounding Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. President Trump, who is also named in Epstein case files, has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.