Howard Lutnick, President Trump’s commerce secretary, was questioned for several hours by lawmakers on Wednesday about 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.
During a closed interview, members of the House Oversight Committee pressed Mr. Lutnick on the extent of his relationship with Mr. Epstein. The Commerce Secretary’s name appeared in more than 250 documents in the Epstein files, a New York Times review found.
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 major Wall Street brokerage firm, lived next door to Mr. Epstein on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for more than a decade. Until recently, Mr. Lutnick had maintained that he was not in the same room as Mr. Epstein after an encounter in 2005. But documents released by the Justice Department earlier this year showed that Mr. Lutnick traveled to Mr. Epstein’s private island in 2012.
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 for a tour of Mr. Epstein’s home in New York after they became neighbors; once, when Mr. Lutnick and his family were invited to Mr. Epstein’s island in 2012; and once to discuss a construction project for Mr. Epstein’s home in New York that may have had an impact on Mr. Lutnick’s residence.
After hours of questioning, Democrats told reporters that Mr. Lutnick had not admitted to misleading Americans about his ties to Mr. Epstein, even when he said on a podcast last year that he was never in the room with Mr. Epstein again after their first meeting.
Speaking to reporters in the hallway outside the closed session, Rep. Yassamin Ansari, Democrat of Arizona, said Mr. Lutnick repeatedly described their interactions as “meaningless and inconsequential.”
But Ms. Ansari said she was unhappy with Mr. Lutnick’s explanation for why he visited Mr. Epstein’s island, especially years after their first interaction, which Mr. Lutnick said made him and his wife uncomfortable. She added that the secretary himself described the visit as “inexplicable.”
The Commerce Department said in a statement late Wednesday that Mr. Lutnick answered nearly 400 questions from Oversight Committee members and staff in a voluntary appearance, with the meeting ending only when members said they had nothing more to ask. He repeatedly stated that three encounters did not constitute a relationship, and the committee adjourned without providing evidence to the contrary, the statement said.
Before Mr. Lutnick’s interview, Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the committee, admitted that Mr. Lutnick had not been “100 percent truthful” about whether or not he had been on the island.
After Republicans finished questioning Mr. Lutnick, Mr. Comer said he was satisfied that Mr. Lutnick was “disclosing” about his interactions with Mr. Epstein. However, he did not respond directly to a question about whether Mr. Lutnick had explained the discrepancy in his accounts.
The documents released by the Justice Department indicate that Mr. Lutnick had another encounter with Mr. Epstein at his home in 2011, years after Mr. Lutnick claimed to have severed ties with him. The records also showed that the men invested together in the same private company and engaged with each other on neighborhood and charitable issues.
Mr. Epstein, who was convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting minors for prostitution, died in a Manhattan prison in 2019 while incarcerated on federal sex trafficking charges.
Mr. Lutnick has faced questions from lawmakers about his ties to Mr. Epstein in congressional hearings on other issues, first in February and again last month.
All Democrats and some Republicans on the Oversight Committee had signaled they would try to force a vote on a subpoena for Mr. Lutnick. But Mr. Comer said that Mr. Lutnick had volunteered to testify.
Although the committee’s investigation into Mr. Epstein and the Justice Department’s handling of the case against him has expanded to include a range of political figures, Mr. Lutnick is the first current Trump administration official to testify before the panel. The committee is expected to release a transcript of his interview, but it was not videotaped, a decision that was criticized by Democrats.
Mr. Comer claimed that Democrats had focused too much on logistics rather than substance, and he criticized the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, for missing Mr. Lutnick’s testimony. A spokeswoman said Mr. Garcia had a scheduling conflict.
The committee also issued a subpoena to Pam Bondi before Mr. Trump fired her as attorney general last month. Her performance is scheduled for May 29th.
The files also showed that in 2013, Mr. Epstein expressed interest in meeting Mr. Lutnick’s former nanny and had her resume sent to him. It is not clear if they ever met.
Mr. Lutnick said in February that he did not know whether the nanny had met Mr. Epstein or whether she was one of the nannies Mr. Lutnick took to the island. Mr. Lutnick has four children.
In October, Mr. Lutnick said in a podcast interview that he decided not to associate with Mr. Epstein after an incident in 2005 after Mr. Epstein alluded to his sexual encounters with women while giving Mr. Lutnick and his wife a tour of his home.
“My wife and I have decided that I will never be in the same room with this disgusting person again,” Mr. Lutnick said on the “Pod Force One” podcast. “So I wasn’t involved with him socially, in business or philanthropically.”
But in a congressional hearing in February, Mr. Lutnick told lawmakers that not only did he meet with Mr. Epstein after that encounter, but that he and his family also traveled to his private Caribbean island of Little St. James for lunch in 2012. Mr. Lutnick traveled aboard his yacht and was accompanied by his wife, children, nannies and other family.
The visit came four years after Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting a minor for prostitution as part of a deal with federal prosecutors.