&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Trump’s Commerce Secretary Lutnick admits visiting Epstein’s infamous island during family vacation")
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday (February 10) admitted that he and his family had lunch with Jeffrey Epstein on the private island of the convicted sex offender in 2012. However, he denied having any close connection with Epstein, saying he barely had any relationship with him and met him only three times over 14 years.
“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat during a family vacation” in 2012, Lutnick said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“My wife was with me, as were my four children and their nannies,” he said. “Another couple was also there with their children. And we had lunch on the island, that is true — for about an hour.”
Lutnick made the admission after his position in the Trump administration came under threat amid growing bipartisan calls for his resignation, following the release of a new cache of Epstein files that revealed his personal and business connections with the disgraced financier.
“Over a 14-year period, I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person,” he said.
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The new revelations contradicted Lutnick’s earlier claims that he had cut off contact with Epstein after 2005, years before the financier was convicted on child sex trafficking charges.
In his testimony on Tuesday morning before the Appropriations panel’s subcommittee on commerce, justice, science and related agencies, Lutnick said he met Epstein after moving into a house next door to him in New York.
“I’m glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved, when I moved, to a house next door to him in New York,” the Cabinet secretary testified.
