Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is scheduled to be questioned Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Lutnick’s voluntary closed-door deposition comes amid a monthslong procession of powerful people summoned before the committee, many of whom have been subjected to embarrassing revelations in the more than 3 million pages of records known as the Epstein files.
The files show Epstein and Lutnick were in business together as recently as 2014, each investing in a now-defunct advertising company called Adfin. The files also revealed that in 2012, Lutnick, his wife, Allison, and their children visited Little St. James, the private Caribbean island Epstein owned.
Epstein and Lutnick were among a group of men seen in an undated photo from the files that appears to have been taken on Epstein’s island.
Before those revelations, Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, had maintained he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, three years before the financier entered a guilty plea to state prostitution charges in Florida. The men lived next door to each other in New York City for years and exchanged emails as late as 2018 — the year before Epstein’s death in jail — about Adfin and a planned museum expansion near their homes.
During testimony before the Senate in February, Lutnick said he “barely had anything to do with that person,” referring to Epstein. However, he acknowledged visiting Epstein’s island.
“We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour. Then we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together,” Lutnick said. “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.”
Lutnick’s testimony comes a week after the committee announced that former Attorney General Pam Bondi has agreed to testify before the panel later this month. She was originally scheduled to appear April 14, but the Justice Department cancelled her deposition after she was ousted from her post.
Others who have appeared include the executors of Epstein’s estate, as well as former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire businessman Les Wexner.
