Lutnick faces House questioning over Epstein ties, contradicting past accounts

Howard Lutnick spent hours behind closed doors with the House Oversight Committee, becoming the first Trump Cabinet official pulled into the panel’s Epstein investigation. The voluntary, transcribed interview turned into an early test of how the Trump administration will handle scrutiny over any links to Jeffrey Epstein, with lawmakers pressing Lutnick on a relationship he has described very differently over time.

The questioning centered on a sharp contradiction. Lutnick had previously said he would “never be in the room” with Epstein after a 2005 visit to Epstein’s New York home. He later acknowledged meeting Epstein three times and said he made a 2012 family lunch visit to Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Documents released by the Department of Justice also indicate that Lutnick and Epstein were in business together as recently as 2014 through an advertising company called Adfin.

According to reporting on the session, Lutnick told lawmakers he and Epstein were merely neighbors in New York City and had neither a personal nor professional relationship during the 14 years they lived next to each other. He also said he never saw Epstein with young women or witnessed anything inappropriate. Those answers came as lawmakers sift through more than 3 million pages of Epstein-related records and keep asking how powerful figures continued associating with Epstein after his 2008 guilty plea in Florida on state sex offense charges involving soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

The political pressure was immediate. Democrats criticized Lutnick during the session and called for his resignation. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina said he should at least testify before the committee, and she later threatened to force a subpoena vote to compel his cooperation. Oversight Chair James Comer said the panel’s aim was to seek justice for victims, and noted that in 10 years on the committee, he had never before brought in a Cabinet secretary from his own party.

The hearing left much unresolved because it was closed to the public, but it made one thing clear: the committee is not treating Epstein as a finished scandal. Oversight Democrats said victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse deserve answers and the American people deserve the truth, and the panel has already said it will hear from Epstein’s victims as the inquiry widens beyond a single witness and into the Trump administration’s orbit.