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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is facing questions Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Democrats harshly criticized Lutnick during a break in the session, accusing him of misleading the public in his statements about his relationship with Epstein and calling on him to resign.
"If you saw the exchanges that my colleagues had with him, you would see he made a farce of the English language," said California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who accused Lutnick of "changing his story" as new facts have emerged.
Lutnick's voluntary closed-door interview is the latest in a monthslong procession of powerful people summoned before the committee, many of whom have been subjected to embarrassing revelations in the more than 3 million pages of records known as the Epstein files.
"The Secretary looks forward to addressing any questions on the record when he testifies voluntarily before the Oversight Committee," a spokesperson for the Commerce Department said before questioning began. "He looks forward to putting to rest the inaccurate and baseless claims in the media designed to distract from his historic work underway at the Commerce Department."
The files show Epstein and Lutnick were in business together as recently as 2014, each investing in a now-defunct advertising company called Adfin. The files also revealed that in 2012, Lutnick, his wife, Allison, and their children visited Little St. James, the private Caribbean island Epstein owned.
Lutnick told the committee he purchased the property next to Epstein's home in 1997, but didn't move in until after renovations were complete in 2005, according to a person familiar with his testimony. Lutnick said they had neither a personal nor professional relationship during the 14 years they were neighbors. He said he never saw Epstein with any young women or witnessed anything inappropriate.
Lutnick said he met Epstein three times. During the first meeting, Lutnick said over the course of 10 to 15 minutes, he and his wife had coffee and a tour of Epstein's home, and noticed a massage table. Lutnick decided then, he said, that he didn't want a relationship with Epstein.
The secretary said he was later in the U.S. Virgin Islands with family when they were invited to Epstein's home for lunch. He said he did not know how Epstein's assistant knew he was in the islands, and found that to be unsettling. He described one other meeting in which they discussed scaffolding in Epstein's foyer.
Midway through the day, Democrats on the committee questioned the veracity of Lutnick's testimony. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam called on Lutnick to resign, describing him as "evasive, nervous" and "dishonest."
"He somehow remembers going to the island after pictures surfaced of him being at the island, but he doesn't remember why he went to the island," the Virginia Democrat said.
Rep. James Walkinshaw said Lutnick was asked if he discussed his testimony with President Trump.
"He refused to answer that question," said Walkinshaw, also of Virginia.
Epstein and Lutnick were among a group of men seen in an undated photo from the files that appears to have been taken on Epstein's island.
Before those revelations, Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, had maintained he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, three years before the financier entered a guilty plea to state prostitution charges in Florida. The men lived next door to each other in New York City for years and exchanged emails as late as 2018 — the year before Epstein's death in jail — about Adfin and a planned museum expansion near their homes.
Speaking to reporters heading into the interview, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the panel's chairman, said he planned to ask Lutnick about the island visit and continued communications with Epstein years after his first arrest.
"I don't know how many more questions there are," Comer said, adding later, "at the end of the day, I haven't seen wrongdoing in the email correspondence. But he wasn't 100% truthful with whether or not he had been on the island, so we'll see."
Comer noted it's unusual for an administration official as high-ranking as Lutnick to appear before a panel like this.
"I've been on Oversight Committee 10 years and there's never been a chairman bringing in Cabinet secretaries of their own party," Comer said.
During testimony before the Senate in February, Lutnick said he "barely had anything to do with that person," referring to Epstein. However, he acknowledged visiting Epstein's island.
"We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour. Then we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together," Lutnick said. "We were on family vacation. We were not apart. To suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012, I don't recall why we did it. But we did."
Lutnick's testimony comes a week after the committee announced that former Attorney General Pam Bondi has agreed to testify before the panel later this month. She was originally scheduled to appear April 14, but the Justice Department cancelled her deposition after she was ousted from her post.
Others who have appeared include the executors of Epstein's estate, as well as former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire businessman Les Wexner.
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