Howard Lutnick Faces Scrutiny Over Epstein Ties After Closed-Door Hearing

Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) emerged from a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, calling Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick "a pathological liar" who is participating in what she described as "the most egregious cover-up in American history,” focused on Lutnick's past connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The hearing, which Sec. Lutnick volunteered to attend, centered on his name appearing more than 100 times across the roughly 3 million pages of documents released by the Trump administration from criminal investigations into the late financier.

Rep. Ansari, speaking to reporters after the session, zeroed in on what she called glaring contradictions in Lutnick's account. In a podcast interview last year with The New York Post, Lutnick had described touring Epstein's Manhattan townhouse alongside his wife after the two families became neighbors in 2005.

As a matter of fact, he said, seeing the massage tables made them so uncomfortable that the couple decided on the walk home they would cut off all contact. "In the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

Previous Records

Yet records from the Epstein files indicate Lutnick and Epstein entered into a business agreement together in 2012, and that Lutnick brought his wife and four children to Epstein's private Caribbean island for lunch that same year, four years after Epstein had pleaded guilty and received what critics widely condemned as a lenient deal for soliciting a minor.

Lutnick later confirmed the island visit during a February Senate hearing, describing it as an hour-long lunch.

"How did I, as a child at the time, see this all over the media about Jeffrey Epstein, and you, an adult who was this person's neighbor, how could you possibly not have known?" Ansari asked.

Ansari noted that Lutnick reportedly used the word "inexplicable" to describe his own decision to visit the island, and repeatedly called his interactions with Epstein "meaningless and inconsequential."

She then closed by turning attention to those she said were at the center of the story. "There are real victims here," she said. "There are potentially over 1,000 women who were abused and raped when they were children… It just demonstrates the culture of enabling these crimes and allowing rich and powerful people to continue… because people like Howard Lutnick knew, and said nothing."