Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testifies during a during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on the Commerce Department’s 2027 budget request in Washington, DC on April 22, 2026.
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Lutnick’s interview, which will not be under oath, began around 11 a.m. ET. The interview was not being recorded on video.
Lutnick was a New York City neighbor of Epstein, who killed himself in jail in August 2019 after his arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges.
Lutnick previously said he cut contact with Epstein in 2005, several years before Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida state court to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
But DOJ files showed the two men remained in contact in the years after that.
Lutnick admitted to a Senate committee in February that he, his family and nannies visited Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2012.
Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who is chair of the committee, told reporters that Lutnick said that he had only talked to Epstein three times over a decade.
Comer accused Democrats on the panel of trying to make political hay of the interview and of lying about details of the Epstein investigation for that purpose.
“If we find that there were any misstatements by Lutnick, it’s a felony to lie to Congress, and he’ll be held accountable,” Comer said. “It’s too bad it’s not a felony for a member of Congress to lie to the media, or we … would have a lot of Democrats that would be having to lawyer up right now.
Earlier, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told reporters during a break in the interview., “We now we know why that interview was not videotaped. “If [President] Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick. It was really embarrassing.”
“He was asked very straightforward questions about whether he regretted misleading the American people,” Khanna said. “I mean, he said that he would never see Epstein again in 2005, and everyone knows that he took his wife and kids to see Epstein in 2012, and yet it was just contortions and lies and no acknowledgement that he misled the American public. And if you saw the exchanges that my colleagues had with him, you would see he made a farce of the English language.”
Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, said, “I feel very comfortable saying that Howard Lutnick is a pathological liar who is enabling the most egregious cover-up in American history.”
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, R-Va., said Lutnick answered that “he doesn’t remember” why he accepted an invitation to Epstein’s island, given his claim that he cut off ties with him in 2005.
This is developing news. Check back for updates.
