Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent four hours with congressional investigators this week answering questions about Jeffrey Epstein, and what emerged was a story built around one relationship he says never happened. Lutnick told investigators that he and his wife agreed when they first met Epstein that they would not establish a relationship with him, a line he said he carried through in later contact.
He also said his wife figured in the conversation at least 50 times during the deposition, underscoring how central he made her role in his account. Lutnick described Epstein as “gross” and said he and his wife had talked it over informally before deciding to avoid him, adding that after leaving with her, she told him to stay away from the financier.
That testimony came under scrutiny because it collided with a photo that surfaced in 2012 showing Lutnick with Epstein on Epstein’s private island. Emails later confirmed the island visit, and Lutnick admitted he briefly went there with his family. He said he remembered only the portion of the island visible in the released photograph.
The details of the visit were laid out in an email sent by Allison Lutnick to Lesley Groff, in which she wrote that they were looking forward to visiting, would be coming from Caneel Bay in the morning, and were “a crowd” of 2 families with 4 kids ranging in age from 7 to 16. She said the group included 6 boys and 2 girls, added “I hope that’s okay,” and wrote, “We would love to join you for lunch.”
Lutnick initially denied having any contact with Epstein after 2005, but later said his last communication was a 2018 correspondence included in the files. The sequence matters because the House Oversight Committee called him in after the 2012 island photo surfaced, and because the visit came 8 years after the couple says they agreed to keep their distance from Epstein and 4 years after Epstein had registered in New York as a sex offender.
The friction in Lutnick’s account is simple and hard to miss: he says he avoided Epstein, yet the record now includes a photo, emails, a family visit and later correspondence. That leaves one question still hanging over his testimony, and it is not whether he knew Epstein, but how far that relationship actually went.
