WASHINGTON – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Senate panel he had nothing to hide about his meetings with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein but several Democratic senators said his previously evasive and contradictory explanations hurt his credibility.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, said Lutnick previously told Congress that he cut off relations in 2005 with his New York City neighbor after Epstein used sexual innuendo to explain the massage table in a room of his now-infamous townhouse.
But documents released by the Justice Department show about 10 emails that mention Lutnick, including references to a lunch on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean where minors accused Epstein of abusing them.
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"Mr. Secretary, that does call into question your fitness for the job you now hold and the question of your credibility before this committee and the Congress," Van Hollen said.
Lutnick met with Epstein at the island on Dec. 23, 2012, according to the new files. But Lutnick said his wife, four children and their nannies also attended. He said he couldn’t recall why they were at the island, Little Saint James, but that he saw no inappropriate activity.
"I have nothing to hide," Lutnick said.
Lutnick said he had an hourlong meeting at 5 p.m. with Epstein a year and a half later, but that was it. He said emails that mention him are negligible among millions of documents that have been released.
"I did not have any relationship with him," said Lutnick, who hasn't been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. "I barely had anything to do with that person."
Asked at a news briefing if Lutnick's comments at the hearing changed President Donald Trump's impression of him, White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt said no.
"The secretary remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the secretary," Levitt said.
The documents mentioning Lutnick are among 3.5 million the Justice Department has released under a recent law. But the department has withheld another 2.5 million documents, which some lawmakers and people who have accused Epstein of abusing them say could hide his accomplices.
Lutnick is among the powerful business and political leaders mentioned in the records, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
A hearing on broadband, but questions about Epstein
Much of Lutnick's testimony before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on commerce was focused on the topic at hand, the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, which is designed to improve broadband access in underserved areas.
And while Republicans avoided the issue of Lutnick's connections to Epstein, Democrats homed in on it repeatedly.
Some noted the fact that Lutnick, a former chairman of finance giant Cantor Fitzgerald, was once Epstein’s next-door neighbor on the tony Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Others remarked about how a Lutnick comment last year − that he refused to even be in the same room with the convicted sex offender after their initial encounter − was shown to be false by emails disclosed in the latest Epstein release.
Lutnick told the New York Post's Miranda Divine on her Pod Force One podcast last October that he and his wife had decided to stay far away from Epstein after their first visit to his townhouse in 2005.
Epstein had invited them over for coffee, Lutnick told Divine, after the couple moved into their newly renovated townhouse next door.
After giving them a tour of the mansion’s "big living room," Epstein led them to a room with double doors.
"I assumed it’s the dining room," Lutnick said on the podcast. "And he opens the doors and there’s a massage table in the middle of the room. And candles all around."
"I say to him, 'Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?'" Lutnick said. "And he says, 'Every day.'"
"And then he gets, like, weirdly close to me, and he says, 'And the right kind of massage,'" Lutnick said.
He and his wife quickly excused themselves and left Epstein’s townhome, Lutnick said. "And in the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house," he added, "my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again."
"I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy,” Lutnick said. “If that guy was there, I wasn’t going ‘cause he’s gross. So I look back at it as a gift. He gave me a gift.”
Divine also asked Lutnick last October about whether any high-profile associates of Epstein knew of his behavior but ignored it.
"No," Lutnick said, "they participated. ... That's what his M.O. was, 'Get a massage, get a massage.'"
"And what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video," Lutnick said. "This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever."
Questions about truthfulness, not wrongdoing
In their Feb. 10 questioning of Lutnick, most Democrats took pains to say they understood there was no evidence linking him to any of Epstein's alleged sex trafficking crimes. Lutnick himself has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
“As you know, Mr. Secretary, the issue is not that you engaged in any wrongdoing in connection with Jeffrey Epstein," Van Hollen said, "but that you totally misrepresented the extent of your relationship with him to the Congress, to the American people and to the survivors of his despicable criminal and predatory acts."
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, confronted the Secretary about past interactions with Epstein, noting that Trump "ran on releasing the Epstein files."
"It troubles me that you took your family to lunch on his island, that you had appointments with him," Coons said. "Please, disclose everything. Put this to rest because this is an issue of grave concern to my constituents."
And Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon ticked off eight instances of what he said were interactions between Lutnick and Epstein, including a potential telephone call, an effort to schedule drinks and exchanges of information about areas of comment interest.
"It sounds like somebody you know well enough to call up and say, 'Let's get our families together. Let's visit each other,'" Merkley said of the Lutnick family visit to Epstein's island in 2012.
Given those, Merkley told Lutnick, his podcast interview "was probably not a full and complete accounting" of his relationship with the disgraced financier. He asked Lutnick to "be completely frank and open with everyone, and correct the record as needed."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'I have nothing to hide.' Howard Lutnick distances himself from Jeffrey Epstein
