Trump would fire Howard Lutnick if he watched his Epstein testimony, Democrats say

Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick evaded questions from members of Congress about his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein and refused to say whether he talked to the president about his closed-door deposition, according to Democrats on a panel investigating the late pedophile.

Lutnick, the first Trump Cabinet official to testify to the House Oversight Committee about Epstein, has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the wealthy and well-connected sex offender, who died in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.

The release of millions of documents stemming from investigations into Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell revealed that the former Cantor Fitzgerald chief had remained in contact with Epstein until at least 2018. He later admitted to visiting the billionaire on his private island in 2012.

“Now we know why that interview was not videotaped,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna told reporters after Lutnick’s deposition on Wednesday.

“If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would’ve fired Howard Lutnick,” he said. “It was really embarrassing. He was asked really straightforward questions about whether he regretted misleading the American people. … It was contortions and lies, and no acknowledgement that he misled the American public.”

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In October, Lutnick told Pod Force One that he had been a neighbor of Epstein’s in New York and once visited his Upper East Side brownstone in 2005 but was appalled when his host made a creepy comment about receiving “the right kind of massages” during a tour of the property.

He later told the Senate Appropriations Committee that he and his family had lunch with Epstein on his private Caribbean island Little St. James in December 2012.

“We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour,” he testified in February. “Then we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together. … We were on family vacation. We were not apart. To suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012... I don’t recall why we did it. But we did.”

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state sex offense charges in Florida, including soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

“I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him,” Lutnick told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

But Lutnick later met with Epstein for an hour at his home in 2011, and the pair continued to email one another until at least 2018. That year, Lutnick emailed Epstein about a proposed expansion of a museum in their neighborhood that would have blocked the view from their homes.

After Wednesday’s deposition, a group of Democrats on the committee accused him of lying and demanded his resignation.

Lutnick’s answers to the committee’s questions about why he agreed to visit Epstein’s island in 2012 despite allegedly cutting ties with the convicted sex offender years earlier made “a farce of the English language,” Khanna told reporters.

Lutnick told the committee that his visit to the island was “inexplicable and unsettling,” according to Democrats.

“What we heard was hours of testimony where Lutnick was attempting to redefine the meaning of the word ‘I,’” said Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw.

“He claims that when he said, ‘I would never be in a room again with Jeffrey Epstein,’ he meant only him and Jeffrey Epstein,” Walkinshaw told reporters. “Epstein was so gross to him that he wasn’t willing to be in a room with him, but he was perfectly OK with his wife and family being in a room with Epstein. … The American people deserve to see the sweat on his brow as he struggles to answer basic questions about his lies to the American people.”

Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari called Lutnick “a pathological liar who is enabling the most egregious coverup in American history.”

“There are real victims here. … and even at the bare minimum, Howard Lutnick was aware of these things. He knew,” she told reporters. “It just demonstrates the culture of enabling these crimes and allowing rich and powerful people like Jeffrey Epstein and all the other rich and disgusting, powerful men to continue.”

Before Lutnick’s deposition, the committee’s Republican chair James Comer conceded that the Commerce Secretary “wasn’t 100 percent truthful with whether or not he had been on the island.”

“So we’ll see and obviously release the transcripts and everyone can see for themselves,” he told reporters.

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Trump and his administration have been desperate to wind down public scrutiny into Epstein and federal law enforcement’s handling of the cases against him and Maxwell, which have grown into political liabilities for the president and his allies facing bipartisan outrage over a lack of promised prosecutions against alleged co-conspirators — fueling allegations of a cover-up.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has also sought to close the book on the Justice Department’s Epstein probes, telling Fox News earlier last month that the release of millions of files connected to the sex offender “should not be part of anything going forward” at the department.

But bipartisan congressional probes into Epstein and his associates continue to collect testimony from powerful figures in Epstein’s orbit.

Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton each testified for several hours as part of the House Oversight Committee investigation; both said they had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi has tentatively agreed to testify before the panel later this month after the Justice Department intervened to block her previously scheduled appearance on April 14. Democratic members of the panel have suggested holding her in contempt for blowing off the subpoena.

Tech billionaire Bill Gates is also scheduled to testify next month.

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