Trump cabinet member ensnared in Epstein scandal
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his relationship with Epstein was "absolutely done" after a single meeting in 2005. The Epstein files tell a much different story.
In an October 2025 interview with the New York Post, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave a detailed account of his relationship with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. According to Lutnick, their interactions consisted of one trip to Epstein’s home in New York City in 2005, three years before Epstein was convicted. Lutnick, who was Epstein’s neighbor, said he found the visit so disturbing that he decided not to have any further contact with Epstein. “That’s my story,” Lutnick said. “A one and absolutely done.”
Lutnick said that after moving into his home in 2005, he and his wife were invited to Epstein’s house for coffee. (Lutnick emphasized that Epstein was “arrested in like, ‘08, I think.”) While he was there, Epstein offered to give Lutnick and his wife a tour of his house. During the tour, Epstein opened some double doors off the dining room to reveal “a massage table in the middle of the room and candles all around and stuff.” Lutnick asked Epstein how often he got massages. “Every day,” Epstein said, according to Lutnick. “And the right kind of massage.”
After that comment, according to Lutnick’s account, he and his wife immediately told Epstein they had to go. Then, “in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.” Lutnick declared, unequivocally, that, after that day, “I was never in the room with [Epstein] socially, for business, or even philanthropy” because “he’s gross.”
There is only one problem with Lutnick’s story: it is not true.
In December 2012, four years after Epstein pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor and seven years after Lutnick claimed he cut off contact, Lutnick emailed Epstein to arrange a get-together at Epstein’s infamous island, Little St. James.
Lutnick confirmed plans to have lunch with Epstein. On December 24, 2012, Epstein’s assistant passed along a message to Lutnick: “Nice seeing you.”
A few days later, on December 28, Lutnick and Epstein became partners in a business venture. They each acquired stakes, through LLCs, in an advertising technology firm called Adfin. They signed the share purchase agreement on consecutive pages. Although the company has now shut down, they both remained investors until at least 2014.
In May 2011, a year before the island meeting, Lutnick and Epstein met for drinks at Epstein’s house, according to emails. Lutnick apparently left his phone at Epstein’s place.
Lutnick has not explained the contradiction between his October 2025 interview and these subsequent meetings with Epstein. “This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments, including securing trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker,” the Commerce Department said in a statement.
Lutnick maintained ties to Epstein for many years. In 2015, for example, Lutnick invited Epstein to a “very intimate fundraising reception“ for Hillary Clinton. (There is no record of Epstein donating.) Epstein did donate $50,000 to a 2017 dinner honoring Lutnick that benefited Jewish charitable causes. In May 2018, Lutnick wrote Epstein to warn him about the expansion of a nearby museum, which could “block our park views.”
Although none of this implicates Lutnick in Epstein’s crimes, it does raise serious questions of why Lutnick lied about his relationship with Epstein and maintained ties long after it was clear that Epstein was a sexual predator.
Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA), and Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) all said that Lutnick should resign or be fired. “Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”
European officials held accountable for connections to Epstein
In contrast to the United States, officials across Europe have lost their posts due to their connections to Epstein.
In the United Kingdom, newly released files showed that Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., had a closer friendship with Epstein than was previously known. In 2009, Mandelson forwarded Epstein a confidential document outlining “a potential sale of government assets” that had been sent to the then-prime minister. The following year, Mandelson gave Epstein early notice that a “€500 billion bailout had been agreed to tackle the eurozone crisis.” Other documents suggest that Mandelson received $75,000 from Epstein, but Mandelson denies receiving the money.
Other documents have revealed that after Epstein was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, Mandelson wrote to Epstein and encouraged him to “be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can.” Mandelson and Epstein appear to have maintained contact until 2016. Mandelson was fired by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September after an earlier release of Epstein-related documents.
On Sunday, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, resigned. McSweeney, a “longtime protégé” of Mandelson’s, said he had “advised the prime minister” to appoint Mandelson to ambassador, and that he took “full responsibility for that advice.” On Monday, Starmer’s communications director, Tim Allan, also resigned to “allow a new No. 10 team to be built.”
In Slovakia, Miroslav Lajčák, national security advisor to the prime minister, resigned at the end of January after released emails showed that Epstein “invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.” Communications between Epstein and Lajčák also included suggestive communications about “gorgeous” girls.
On Sunday, Mona Juul, Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, also resigned. Both Juul’s name and her husband’s name appeared “several times” in the Epstein files, Politico reported. A change to Epstein’s will made shortly before his death reportedly intended to leave Juul’s children $10 million. In a statement announcing her resignation, Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had opened an investigation “into Juul’s knowledge of and contact with Epstein.” In Sweden, Joanna Rubinstein resigned after it was revealed that she visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2012. Rubinstein was president of UNHCR in Sweden, a group that fundraises for the UN Refugee Agency.
Kind of tells you where we're at that all these staffers and figureheads from other countries are resigning due to their involvement with Epstein, but Trump and his associates just double down on verifiably false claims of non-involvement. They are nothing short of pathological liars.
Trump will not fire Nutlick over Epstein. He is rightfully afraid that it might open the floodgate of accountability.