Trump administration Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick admitted Tuesday that he and his family had lunch on notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private island several years ago.
“I was on a boat trip with my family and we had lunch together,” Lutnick said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2012.
“My wife was with me, and so were my four children and their nanny,” he said. “There was another couple there and they were there with their children as well.”
“And we had lunch on the island, which was, I think, an hour,” he said.
“And we left with all our kids, our nanny, and my wife. We were on a family trip,” he said.
The director’s confession comes as he faces bipartisan calls for his resignation following the release of records showing his business and personal ties to Epstein were more extensive than previously known.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testifies during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Judiciary, Science, and Related Agencies on February 10, 2026 in Washington, DC. Lutnick is facing bipartisan calls for his resignation following revelations in the latest release of the Epstein files.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Lutnick previously said he stopped communicating with Epstein after 2005, several years before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state-level charges of soliciting the prostitution of a minor that required him to register as a sex offender.
But an analysis of the latest batch of Epstein files released by the Justice Department found that Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Epstein continued to communicate years later.
According to the documents, Mr. Epstein invited Mr. Lutnick to lunch on a private Caribbean island in December 2012. According to CBS News, the two had a business relationship in 2014.
Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges.
Lutnick claimed in testimony Tuesday morning before the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Judiciary, Science, and Related Agencies that he had “very little to do with that person.”
“I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved into the house next door to his in New York,” the cabinet secretary testified.
“Over the next 14 years, I met him two, two other times, as far as I can remember,” he said. “So I met him six years later, then a year and a half later I saw him again, and then we never met again.”
“You’ve probably seen all these documents, but out of millions of documents, there may be 10 emails that connect me to him… over 14 years.”
“I had nothing to do with him,” Lutnick said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the subcommittee, responded: “There is no indication that you yourself engaged in any wrongdoing with Jeffrey Epstein. The fact is that you misled the country and Congress based on your previous statements suggesting that you had cut off all contact, when in fact you had not.”
Asked by Mr. Van Hollen if he had seen anything inappropriate during his visit to the island, Mr. Lutnick said he had not.
“The only people I saw with my wife and children and another couple and their children were staff members who worked for Mr. Epstein on that island,” he testified.
Mr. Van Hollen asked whether Mr. Lutnick would commit to sharing his records on Epstein with Congress to “ensure the integrity of the file.”
“I’m definitely going to talk about it. I wasn’t thinking about that,” Lutnick said, adding: “I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing.”
