Prior to former President Bill Clinton’s closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in February, committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) (center) speaks with committee member (R-Left) Nancy・Speaks at a press conference with Representative Mace (R-South Carolina), Representative Glenn Grossman (R-Wisconsin), Representative William Timmons (R-South Carolina), and Representative John McGuire (R-Virginia). Chappaqua, New York, 27, 2026.
David Dee Delgado | Getty Images
Rep. Nancy Mace said Friday that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick should testify before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about his relationship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Howard Lutnick should respond to questions from the Oversight Committee,” Mace of the R.S.C. said in an X post Friday morning.
Mace’s tweet was in response to an
It is unclear when the photo, which has since been restored to the Department of Justice’s public database, was taken.
A photo from the Justice Department’s Epstein Files database appears to show Jeffrey Epstein and three other men. Other men in the photo appear to include Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and his friend Michael Lehman.
Source: Epstein Files | Department of Justice
But in addition to Mr. Epstein, they also appear to include Mr. Lutnick and his friend Michael Lehmann, who other documents in the Justice Department’s database show were vacationing with Mr. Lutnick and his family when they all visited Mr. Epstein’s private island for lunch in December 2012.
Mr. Lutnick has not been charged with any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein.
Mace told reporters late Friday morning that he “will ask” Lutnick to testify before the oversight committee.
Separately, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told reporters he believed there would be enough votes in the committee to subpoena Lutnick to testify.
The lawmakers’ comments came before the committee was scheduled to question former President Bill Clinton in a deposition in Chappaqua, New York, about his ties to Epstein.
Mr. Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was removed from office Thursday over Mr. Epstein. She later testified to reporters that she had no recollection of meeting Mr. Epstein and knew nothing about his crimes.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters Thursday that it was “very likely” the committee would subpoena Lutnick to testify.
Comer did not call President Donald Trump to testify.
Trump, who was a longtime friend of Epstein until they had a falling out in the early 2000s, said the Justice Department’s recently released files on Epstein exonerate him of any wrongdoing.
MS Now reported earlier this week that the Justice Department withheld the release of memos and notes related to FBI interviews and notes from women who claim President Trump sexually abused them when they were minors.
In response to this and other similar reporters, the Justice Department said, “When files are temporarily removed to redact victims or redact personally identifying information, those documents are immediately restored online and made available to the public.”
In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on February 10, Lutnick admitted that he and his family had lunch with Epstein on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in December 2012.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testifies during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Judiciary, Science, and Related Agencies to consider overhauling broadband deployment funding at the Department of Commerce on February 10, 2026, at the Capitol in Washington, DC.
Elizabeth Franz | Reuters
Mr. Lutnick’s testimony came after Mr. Epstein claimed that he cut off contact with his New York City neighbor in 2005, three years before Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida state court to pimping an underage girl.
Justice Department files show Lutnick continued to communicate with Epstein years later.
MS Now reported on February 10, “In 2015, Lutnick appeared to invite Epstein to an ‘intimate’ fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, for which Lutnick was fundraising at the time.”
“According to files, Epstein donated $50,000 to a New York charity in Lutnick’s honor in 2017,” MS Now reported.
The documents also show that Mr. Epstein and Mr. Lutnick “each signed on behalf of a limited liability company that agreed on December 28, 2012 to acquire stock in a now-closed advertising technology company called Adfin,” CBS News previously reported.
Epstein died by suicide in prison in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
