Howard Lutnick, President Trump\u2019s commerce secretary, was grilled by lawmakers for several hours on Wednesday over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, after documents released by the Justice Department revealed that Mr. Lutnick had misrepresented his relationship with Mr. Epstein.<\/p>\n
During a closed-door interview, members of the House Oversight Committee pressed Mr. Lutnick on the extent of his relationship with Mr. Epstein. The commerce secretary\u2019s name appeared in more than 250 documents in the Epstein files, a review by The New York Times found.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lutnick is one of the highest-profile cabinet members to come under scrutiny in connection with Mr. Epstein. The commerce secretary, who previously ran a large Wall Street brokerage firm, lived next door to Mr. Epstein on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for more than a decade. Until recently, Mr. Lutnick had claimed to have not been in the same room with Mr. Epstein after an encounter in 2005. But documents released by the Justice Department earlier this year<\/a> showed that Mr. Lutnick had traveled to Mr. Epstein\u2019s private island in 2012.<\/p>\n According to two people familiar with his testimony, Mr. Lutnick said in his opening statement that he had met Mr. Epstein only three times: once for coffee and a tour of Mr. Epstein\u2019s home in New York after they became neighbors; once when Mr. Lutnick and his family were invited to Mr. Epstein\u2019s island in 2012; and once to discuss a construction project on Mr. Epstein\u2019s home in New York that might have had an impact on Mr. Lutnick\u2019s residence.<\/p>\n After hours of questioning, Democrats told reporters that Mr. Lutnick did not admit to misleading Americans about his ties to Mr. Epstein, including when he said on a podcast last year that he was never in the room with Mr. Epstein again after their first meeting.<\/p>\n Speaking with reporters in the hallway outside the closed session, Representative Yassamin Ansari, Democrat of Arizona, said that Mr. Lutnick repeatedly characterized their interactions as \u201cmeaningless and inconsequential.\u201d<\/p>\n But Ms. Ansari said that she was not satisfied with Mr. Lutnick\u2019s explanation about why he visited Mr. Epstein\u2019s island, particularly years after their first interaction, which Mr. Lutnick said made him and his wife uncomfortable. She added that the secretary himself called the visit \u201cinexplicable.\u201d<\/p>\n Before Mr. Lutnick\u2019s interview, Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the committee\u2019s chairman, acknowledged that Mr. Lutnick \u201cwasn\u2019t 100 percent truthful\u201d about whether or not he had been on the island.<\/p>\n After Republicans finished questioning Mr. Lutnick, Mr. Comer said that he was satisfied that Mr. Lutnick was being \u201cforthcoming\u201d about his interactions with Mr. Epstein. But he did not directly answer a question about whether Mr. Lutnick explained the discrepancy in his accounts.<\/p>\n The documents released by the Justice Department suggested that Mr. Lutnick had another encounter with Mr. Epstein at his house in 2011, years after Mr. Lutnick claimed to have cut ties with him. The records also indicated that the men invested in the same privately held company together and dealt with each other on neighborhood and philanthropic issues.<\/p>\n Mr. Epstein, who was convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor, died in a Manhattan jail in 2019<\/a> while being held on federal sex-trafficking charges.<\/p>\n