Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday that he visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island in 2012 — seven years after he previously claimed he severed all contact with the notorious financier. The admission came under pressure from newly released FBI files that blew apart the timeline Lutnick had carefully constructed in public.
As recently as October, Lutnick told the New York Post that after a 2005 tour of Epstein's Upper East Side townhouse, he and his wife were so revolted that he:
"decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again."
The FBI files, released January 30 pursuant to a congressional transparency law, tell a different story. Emails place Lutnick in a meeting with Epstein in May 2011. A separate document puts him on Epstein's island in 2012 — with his wife, children, and nannies in tow. One document in the FBI cache indicated Epstein wanted to meet one of Lutnick's nannies.
Confronted with the paper trail, the 64-year-old Commerce Secretary didn't deny it. He reframed it.
Lutnick appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and offered a series of careful concessions laced with minimizing language, the Post now reports. On the island visit:
"We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour."
On the broader relationship:
"I did not have a relationship with him, I barely had anything to do with that person."
On the 2012 trip specifically:
"We left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife. All together. We were on a family vacation. We were not apart… I don't recall why we did it, but we did."
"I don't recall why we did it, but we did" is a remarkable sentence from a man who previously told the public he cut off contact in 2005 because Epstein repulsed him. Lutnick also acknowledged finding evidence of a May 2011 meeting when he reviewed the released documents:
"I looked through the millions of documents for my name, just like everybody else. And what I found was there was a document that said I had a meeting with him in May, I think, for an hour at 5 o'clock."
He estimated roughly ten emails connected him to Epstein over 14 years and insisted the contacts were negligible. He told the subcommittee:
"I have nothing to hide — absolutely nothing."
The problem isn't what Lutnick did or didn't do on that island. The problem is that the story he told in October and the story the FBI files tell are not the same story. Two encounters he could recall. A 14-year timeline. A man he "barely had anything to do with." None of those qualifiers appeared in his earlier, much cleaner version — the one where contact ended in 2005, full stop.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) both called on Lutnick to resign over his Epstein ties. Massie reviewed unredacted documents at the Justice Department on Monday and told reporters that six associates of Epstein were "likely incriminated" by their inclusion in the files. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who also reviewed the files Monday, read six names on the House floor Tuesday — a venue that grants him legal immunity from defamation claims. Those names:
Massie had previously claimed in September that the FBI knows of 20 powerful men who allegedly victimized young women and girls through Epstein's network. He named one at the time — Barclays CEO Jes Staley, who quickly resigned his position.
The Justice Department says Epstein's sex-trafficking ring had more than 1,000 victims. Ghislaine Maxwell remains the only other person prosecuted.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt used her Tuesday briefing to push back on the media's fixation on Epstein, rattling off a series of economic indicators before addressing Lutnick directly:
"This week, national median rents have fallen to a four-year low [and] mortgage affordability this week surged to a four-year high, but not a single mention of that in this briefing room today."
She also noted that for the ninth straight month, there were zero illegal border crossings at the southern border. On Lutnick's position within the administration, she was unequivocal:
"Secretary Lutnick remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the secretary."
On the broader Epstein file release, Leavitt seemed to suggest the documents undercut the left's narrative more than the right's:
"I'm sure many of you, when you read that, that alleged FBI report, probably thought to yourself, 'Wow, this really cracks our narrative that we've been trying to push about this president for many years.'"
That's a reference to a 2019 FBI file that surfaced Monday, quoting a former Palm Beach, Florida, police chief who recalled that Trump called him in 2006 to encourage an investigation into Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Trump called "evil." Trump has said he broke off relations with Epstein in the early 2000s, years before Epstein's 2008 guilty plea in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor.
The political wreckage from the Epstein files isn't confined to one party or one country. Alex Acosta resigned as Labor Secretary in Trump's first term in 2019 after scrutiny of his role brokering Epstein's 2008 plea deal. Republicans have focused on former President Bill Clinton's own Epstein links. Across the Atlantic, King Charles III revoked Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's title of "prince" last year after sustained coverage of rape allegations by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's relationship with Washington is strained over his appointment of Peter Mandelson — who has his own Epstein ties — as ambassador to the United States.
This is not a partisan scandal. It is a power scandal. Epstein operated at the intersection of finance, politics, and blackmail — Lutnick himself described him in October as "the greatest blackmailer ever" and said "that's how he had money." The released files are pulling back a curtain that powerful people on every continent would prefer stayed drawn.
The question for Lutnick isn't whether he committed a crime on that island. It's simpler than that. He told the public one story. The FBI files told another. He adjusted his account under oath only after the documents forced his hand. For a man serving as a key trade negotiator in the Trump administration, credibility isn't optional — it's the whole product.
More than 1,000 victims. One conviction besides Epstein himself. Six names were read on the House floor under legal immunity. Twenty more that a Republican congressman says the FBI knows about. And a Commerce Secretary who can't remember why he lunched on the island of a man he says disgusted him.
The files are out. The question now is whether anyone with real power faces real consequences — or whether Ghislaine Maxwell remains the system's only offering.
