House Democrats call on Howard Lutnick to resign as commerce secretary after Epstein interview

WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats on Thursday called on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign from office, saying that he used a closed-door interview with lawmakers to “perpetuate a false public narrative” about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

And Democrats on the House Oversight Committee accused the top Trump administration official of attempting to “evade responsibility” and avoid addressing contradicting information about when he severed ties with the late New York financier and convicted sex offender.

Lutnick, formerly the CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, traveled to Capitol Hill last week for a transcribed interview with Oversight Committee lawmakers as part of their ongoing probe into the Epstein files.

The commerce secretary has been a target of particular scrutiny for the committee — which has dialed in on documents published by the Justice Department which appear to run counter to Lutnick’s claims that he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, years before his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. According to files in the Justice Department release, Lutnick and his family visited Epstein’s infamous island in 2012.

In a letter to the cabinet secretary Thursday, Oversight Committee Democrats said that he failed to clear up that disparity during his closed-door interview.

“Given your opportunity to come clean, you instead offered implausible distinctions and semantic games,” wrote the Democrats, led by California Representative Robert Garcia. “When asked directly whether your prior public statements about your relationship with Epstein were misleading, you flatly denied it.”

During his meeting with lawmakers, Lutnick insisted his claim that he stopped seeing Epstein in 2005 was “not misleading” and that he had never been “with” Epstein after that date because during his 2012 visit to the late financier’s island he had been with his wife.

“’I’ refers to Howard Lutnick,” the commerce secretary said at one point. “’We’ refers to my wife and myself together. So I think this is entirely accurate. Howard Lutnick was never with him socially, philanthropically … or in a business setting.”

Lutnick said he had met Epstein with his wife “on two meaningless and inconsequential interactions.”

Democrats, who said “no reasonable person” would accept the secretary’s explanation, added that he’d claimed not to remember how his visit to Epstein’s island was arranged or whether he knew Epstein had been convicted of sex crimes prior to traveling there. Lutnick further declined to answer questions about whether he’d discussed his relationship with Epstein with President Donald Trump.

“Nothing justifies shielding discussions of your personal relationship with a convicted sex offender from congressional oversight,” the House Democrats wrote. “Instead, you chose to further the White House cover-up.”

Lutnick, the lawmakers concluded, “cannot be trusted” to serve in the Trump administration. “A cabinet secretary’s most basic obligation to Congress is candor; your statements have a bearing on the lives of all Americans.”

Kentucky Representative James Comer, Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, was dismissive of Democrats’ call for Lutnick to step aside.

“Democrats continue to expose themselves as hypocrites and manufacture false narratives,” he told Courthouse News in a statement. “Secretary Lutnick had three meetings with Epstein during their 15 years as neighbors.”

And Comer dinged his Democratic colleagues who he said “defended” Representative Stacey Plaskett, the congressional delegate for the U.S. Virgin Islands, who reportedly exchanged texts with Epstein during a 2019 hearing on the Oversight Committee.

The Commerce Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

Democrats and Republicans on the Oversight Committee have clashed for months over the Epstein probe, which enjoys some bipartisan support, but which has repeatedly frustrated Comer.

Most recently, Democrats accused the committee’s majority of helping former Attorney General Pam Bondi dodge a congressional deposition. Bondi was set to testify to the panel, under oath and behind closed doors, last month, but she failed to appear. As Democrats prepared to hold the former attorney general in contempt of Congress, committee Republicans announced they’d reached a deal with Bondi to sit on May 29 for a “transcribed interview.”

Unlike a formal deposition, Bondi can give a transcribed interview without being sworn in by lawmakers. Sources close to the process have said that she would still be bound by federal law against making false statements.

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