Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sat for a transcribed, closed-door interview with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday, answering questions about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein as part of a broader congressional inquiry into the convicted sex offender.
The interview, which was not recorded on video, ran from approximately 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. ET. Lutnick is one of several prominent figures asked to speak privately with the committee following the Department of Justice's release of documents related to Epstein, who died by suicide in August 2019 while awaiting federal trial on child sex trafficking charges.
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and billionaire Leon Black are among those scheduled for similar non-public sessions with the panel in the coming weeks.
Lutnick had been a New York City neighbor of Epstein. He previously said he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, years before Epstein's 2008 guilty plea in Florida state court to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. DOJ files released since then showed the two men remained in contact after 2005. Lutnick acknowledged in Senate testimony in February that he, his family, and their nannies visited Epstein's private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2012.
Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, told reporters after the interview that Lutnick said he had spoken with Epstein only three times over the course of a decade. Comer accused Democrats on the panel of misrepresenting details of the Epstein inquiry for political purposes. "If we find that there were any misstatements by Lutnick, it's a felony to lie to Congress, and he'll be held accountable," Comer said.
Democrats emerged with a sharply different account. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, told reporters during a break, "We now know why that interview was not videotaped. If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick." Khanna said Lutnick refused to acknowledge that his public statements about cutting ties with Epstein contradicted his own admission of visiting the island years later. "It was just contortions and lies," Khanna said.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, called Lutnick "a pathological liar who is enabling the most egregious cover-up in American history." Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Republican, offered a more restrained account, saying Lutnick answered that "he doesn't remember" why he accepted an invitation to Epstein's island given his stated claim of having ended the relationship.
The committee's Epstein interviews are part of a broader effort to establish a public record of who had contact with Epstein and under what circumstances. The DOJ file releases have intensified scrutiny on individuals who appeared in Epstein's records but have not faced criminal charges.
