President Donald Trump on Thursday simultaneously claimed not to have known about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s 2012 trip to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and admitted to being aware of the visit just days after Lutnick admitted to having travelled to the notorious locale.
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room during an event to announce the repeal of a longstanding climate rule reviled by the fossil fuel industry, Trump was asked if he’d been aware of Lutnick’s travel to Little Saint James, the small part of the U.S. Virgin Islands previously owned by Epstein, and whether he still has confidence in the former bond trading executive.
“No, I wasn’t aware of it … I actually haven’t spoken to him about it … but from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children,” he said.
He aded: “I was never there — somebody will someday say that I was never there.”
Trump notably did not answer the second part of the question as to whether he has confidence in Lutnick, a longtime friend who had pushed to become Treasury Secretary after serving as the finance chief for the president’s 2024 campaign.
The commerce secretary has long been known to have had ties to Epstein, who was his next door neighbor in New York at one point, years before he pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in Florida as part of a sweetheart deal with a George W Bush-era prosecutor who later became Trump’s first Secretary of Labor during his first term.
In October, he told the New York Post that he’d cut off contact with Epstein — who died in a New York jail cell while awaiting sex trafficking charges in 2019 — after a 2005 encounter that he claimed had left him so unsettled that he’d vowed to “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”
But documents released by the Justice Department this year that were reviewed by The Independent show that Lutnick not only maintained ties with Epstein as late as 2018 — the year before he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges and long after he’d spent time in jail for state-level offenses related to his preying on young girls — but even arranged a visit to Epstein’s island in 2012.
Lutnick admitted to visiting the infamous landmass, which is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on Tuesday under questioning from Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen.
“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” he said.
“We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children with my nannies and my wife … I don’t recall why we did it.”
Lutnick also claimed in his testimony that he “did not have any relationship with” Epstein and “barely had anything to do with that person.”
Trump’s comments about Lutnick came just days after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt abruptly cut short a briefing with reporters after being asked about the commerce secretary’s Epstein ties.
Leavitt was roughly 20 minutes into one of her regular briefings with the White House press corps on Tuesday when a reporter asked whether President Donald Trump would stand behind Lutnick after his admission to the Senate Commerce Committee hours earlier.
She replied that Trump “fully supports” Lutnick and described him as “a very important member of President Trump’s team.”
But instead of allowing reporters to probe further into Trump’s views on Lutnick, or ask any other further questions, Leavitt launched into a monologue chastising reporters for not asking about various positive statistics touted by the administration on issues of importance to the president before storming out with her aides in tow.
