U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has acknowledged that he traveled to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012, a disclosure that raises new questions about his past association with the convicted sex offender.
The admission appears to conflict with earlier statements suggesting that Lutnick had distanced himself from Epstein well before the financier’s criminal conviction. The new timeline places Lutnick on Epstein’s island years after he had publicly claimed to have severed ties.
“I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnick testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. “My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies … We had lunch on the island. That is true. For an hour.”
Lutnick told lawmakers that the meeting took place while he and his family were traveling by boat during a vacation. He said they stopped at the island, where they shared a one-hour lunch with Epstein before continuing their trip.
Emails and other correspondence related to the visit were among the Epstein documents recently made public by the U.S. Department of Justice, bringing renewed attention to the trip.
The disclosure has prompted some lawmakers to demand Lutnick’s resignation. However, the White House pushed back on Tuesday, saying he continues to have the full backing of President Donald Trump.
Details of Lutnick’s trip emerged through emails made public by the Justice Department.
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In a message dated December 2012, his wife, Allison, wrote to Epstein’s assistant shortly before the visit. “We are looking forward to visiting you,” she said in the email, adding, “We would love to join you for lunch.”
The commerce secretary had earlier told Congress that he ended his relationship with Epstein in 2005. He said the break came after Epstein, who lived near him in New York, made a sexually suggestive remark while explaining why he kept a massage table in his home.
But during testimony on Tuesday, Lutnick acknowledged that their contact did not end there. “Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall,” he said.
Justice Department records indicate that one of those meetings included a visit to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean on December 23, 2012. The trip took place four years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Lutnick’s appearance before lawmakers was the first time he openly acknowledged traveling to the island.
“I don’t recall why we did it, but we did it,” he said Tuesday, speaking about the lunch.
Lutnick, who is widely seen as the driving force behind President Trump’s global tariffs strategy, has not been accused of any misconduct related to Epstein.
He also told lawmakers that, aside from the island visit, he met Epstein once more about a year and a half later for what he described as a one-hour meeting.
According to Lutnick, only about 10 emails link him to Epstein within the millions of pages of records released by the Justice Department.
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“Over a 14-year period, I did not have any relationship with him, I barely had anything to do with that person,” he mentioned.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, pressed Lutnick over what he described as inconsistencies in his statements about Epstein.
“The issue is not that you engaged in any wrongdoing in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, but that you totally misrepresented the extent of your relationship with him, to the Congress, to the American people and to the survivors of his despicable criminal and predatory acts,” Van Hollen said.
Lutnick is one of several prominent figures whose names appear in the more than 3.5 million pages of records released by the Justice Department under a law requiring their disclosure.
The record that he traveled to Epstein’s island years after saying he had ended contact has sparked calls from both parties for him to resign from the Trump administration.
Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, and Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, both said Lutnick should step aside. The two lawmakers had co-sponsored the legislation last year that required the Justice Department to make the Epstein files public.