Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly told congressional investigators that he could not remember when he learned that his one-time neighbor Jeffrey Epstein was a sex offender who pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
In his deposition to the House Oversight committee last week, Lutnick said he could not explain why he and his family decided to have lunch with Epstein on his private Caribbean island, Little St. James, in December 2012, four years after Epstein’s plea deal.
“I don’t remember why we went,” he told the panel, according to a transcript of the interview. “I don’t remember him registering as a sex offender. And if my next door neighbor was registered as a sex offender and I knew it, I would remember that.”
Lutnick, who has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, faced the panel’s questions for more than four hours during his closed-door interview last week as part of the committee’s ongoing investigations into the dead sex offender and his alleged network of powerful allies.
The former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO refused to tell lawmakers whether he talked to the president about his deposition. At the same time, he repeatedly described his meetings with Epstein over the years as “meaningless and inconsequential.”
In October, Lutnick told Pod Force One that he had been a neighbor of Epstein’s in New York and once visited his Upper East Side brownstone in 2005, but was appalled when his host made a creepy comment about receiving “the right kind of massages” during a tour of the property.
Lutnick told the podcast that he “will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again” from that moment.
“We were uncomfortable with what he said. He was gross,” Lutnick told investigators, according to a transcript of his deposition.
“And so, we discussed that I would avoid him and not have a personal or professional relationship with him, which I did not,” he said. “With respect to visiting, having lunch with my family and another family and the whole crowd going to his island for lunch, I don’t remember why we went.”
Lutnick later met with Epstein for an hour at his home in 2011 to discuss renovations on the home next door. “I rang the bell, sat in his foyer with my dog, waited for him to come down, heard what he had to say, and left,” Lutnick said, according to the deposition transcript.
“As far as I recall, it was about scaffolding. It was meaningless and inconsequential,” he said.
The pair or their staff continued to email one another until at least 2018.
Florida police began investigating Epstein in 2005 after an underage girl who had been hired to give him a massage at his home told her family he had sexually abused her.
Investigators eventually compiled a 53-page indictment using evidence from 34 victims, only for the predator to be granted a non-prosecution agreement by federal prosecutors under what critics have called a “sweetheart” plea deal that avoided heavier federal charges.
In 2008, he pleaded guilty to a lesser state offense of soliciting a minor under 18 for prostitution and was required to register as a sex offender.
Lutnick insisted that he would not have gone to Epstein’s island if he or his wife knew he was a sex offender.
“But it was a prominent case, and so you knew, at the bare minimum, that he had solicited a minor,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari told Lutnick, according to the transcript of his interview.
“You don’t recall it being all over the news, the media?” she asked. “I mean, I was a child when this happened, and I remember all of it. … It’s just interesting that you didn’t know that your neighbor, Jeffrey Epstein, one of the most famous individuals in this country, even at the time, was all over the news for soliciting a minor in 2008.”
“He became famous in 2019. I didn’t know him to be famous before this,” Lutnick replied.
“So while I can’t sit here and say, you know, 20 years ago or however long ago this was, but I can tell you what I remember — I’m just trying to be helpful, because I’ve done nothing — and we all know I have done absolutely nothing wrong, inappropriate,” he later testified.
“You know, I only interacted with this person three times my whole life, all, as you know, meaningless and inconsequential, never with other people, nothing,” he added. “So I’m just trying to be helpful to give you context to the extent I can.”
The Trump administration is eager to wind down public scrutiny into Epstein and federal law enforcement’s handling of the cases against him and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, which have faced intense bipartisan scrutiny and allegations of a cover-up.
But bipartisan congressional probes into Epstein and his associates continue to collect testimony from powerful figures in Epstein’s orbit.
Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton each testified to the committee for several hours
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, private equity investor Leon Black and former Attorney General Pam Bondi are expected to sit for interviews with the committee in the coming weeks.
