Cabinet member has played a key role in driving president’s housing agenda
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, a central player in President Trump’s housing and mortgage agenda, has admitted in Senate testimony that he and his family had lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012.
The revelation adds political risk for an administration team already reshaping the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and pushing a contentious housing affordability agenda with homebuilders.
Trump has touted Lutnick as one of the officials he's been consulting on the future of the government‑sponsored enterprises. Lutnick has been under mounting pressure over newly released Justice Department records detailing his contacts with Epstein, even as the administration weighs major housing changes closely watched by the mortgage industry.
“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on 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 nannies. I had another couple with — they were there as well, with their children.”
“And we had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour,” he said. “And we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife, all together. We were on family vacation.”
The secretary’s admission came as analyses of Justice Department files showed he and Epstein remained in contact years after Lutnick previously said he cut ties around 2005.
In December 2012, Epstein invited Lutnick to lunch on the Caribbean island, and the two men had business dealings as late as 2014, according to the records and news reports.
“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,” Lutnick said.
“Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times. So six years later, I met him, and then a year and a half after that, I met him, and never again.”
“Probably the total — and you’ve seen all of these documents, of these millions and millions of documents — there may be 10 emails connecting me with him... Over a 14 year period. I did not have any relationship with him,” he said. “I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing.”
Credibility questions as Trump mortgage agenda advances
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D‑Md., the panel’s ranking member, said Lutnick’s earlier statements to Congress conflicted with the documents. “There’s not an indication that you yourself engaged in any wrongdoing with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the fact that you ... misled the country and the Congress based on your earlier statements suggesting that you cut off all contact, when, in fact, you had not,” Van Hollen said.
Asked if he saw anything improper on the island, Lutnick said he did not. “The only thing I saw with my wife and my children and the other couple and their children was staff who worked for Mr. Epstein on that island,” he testified.
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