Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick had years of contact with Epstein: Records
Records show they invested together in the same private company, involved each other in neighborhood and philanthropic matters, and socialized in New York and the Caribbean. At one point, Epstein tried to meet with Lutnick’s nanny.
The recordings directly contradict Lutnick’s claim on a podcast last year that he was so disgusted with Epstein during a visit to his city home in 2005 that Lutnick never set foot in the same room as Epstein again.
“So I’ve never been in the same room with him socially, for work, or even for philanthropy,” Lutnick said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Force One.” “I didn’t spend any time with him,” Lutnick said, reached briefly by phone last month.
Lutnick and his wife met Epstein in 2005 and “had very limited interaction with him” in subsequent years, a Commerce Department representative said in a statement.
“This is nothing more than a failed attempt by legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments, including securing trillions of dollars in investments, securing historic trade deals, and fighting for American workers,” the statement said.
Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida in 2008, died in the Manhattan prison where he was being held on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. An investigation by The New York Times found that Lutnick’s name appeared in more than 250 documents in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department.
The documents do not appear to depict a close friendship between the men, but suggest they had a relationship typical of neighbors running in overlapping circles filled with business and wealth. Although their lives intersected from time to time, the files show that they communicated with each other via email, mostly through assistants, rather than directly.
The files suggest their relationship was reciprocal, with Epstein and Lutnick communicating at different times. But the records often lack context and may not document every interaction between the men.
In some cases, the emails in the files reflect that Epstein was aware of interesting information about his neighbor; For example, when Epstein’s lawyer stated on the television show “Billions” that a main character was partly based on Lutnick, or when his lawyer forwarded him an article about a lawsuit Lutnick had filed against a former assistant.
The Times reported last week that Lutnick and his family were arrested on December 23, 2012, at Epstein’s home in St. Louis, U.S. Virgin Islands. Little St. Thomas’s private island off the coast of St. Thomas. He informed James that they were planning a visit. The next day, Epstein’s assistant delivered Lutnick a message from Epstein: “Nice to see you,” suggesting the visit had taken place.
However, by then the two men were already in constant contact. Epstein’s schedule for May 1, 2011, includes a date for drinks with Lutnick at 5 p.m., followed by dinner with filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn at 6:30 p.m. Records show that the meetings took place at Epstein’s home and that Lutnick left something there.
One of Epstein’s employees emailed him the next day saying, “The phone belonged to Howard Lutnick, it was taken.”
Lutnick is at 11 E. 71st St., a half-block from Central Park. He bought his home at , in 1998 for $7.6 million, based on taxes listed on property records. Epstein, 9 E. 71st St. He lived in the mansion next door at . (Epstein also previously owned Lutnick’s home, but property records show he sold it to another buyer two years before Lutnick purchased it.)
Lutnick said he moved there in 2005 after renovations and was invited to tour Epstein’s home. Lutnick said in a podcast interview last year that he and his wife rushed out, outraged when Epstein used sexual innuendos to explain why there was a massage table in the middle of the room.
The files appear to have been out of contact for several years, but in October 2009, according to an email Epstein received from an assistant, Lutnick asked to speak to Epstein and asked for his phone number. It is not clear whether they talked or not.
About a year later, in September 2010, Epstein’s assistant found a house on the other side of Lutnick’s, at the then-vacant 13 E. 71st St. He asked if she was interested in renting the house at . The assistant said he was told Lutnick “tried to buy No. 13, made a handshake deal with the owner, but Howard belittled them.” Epstein did not rent the house, according to a broker who represented the house at the time.
In the spring of 2011, the two men went back and forth for a phone call about a month before their planned drinks at Epstein’s house.
In early 2013, shortly after Lutnick’s planned visit to the Caribbean, Epstein, through his assistant, sent Lutnick a link to an article about Antigua regarding intellectual property and gambling, topics in which Lutnick had a keen interest.
A few months later, both men signed on for a seemingly ill-fated investment in AdFin Solutions Inc., a private company that sells itself as offering cutting-edge intelligence to online advertising buyers. The Epstein files were filed with Epstein’s Southern Trust Co. It shows that Lutnick invested through Cantor Fitzgerald’s subsidiary CVAFH I LLC.
The investment did not work out well for Epstein. David Mitchell, a businessman who told him about AdFin, later informed Epstein and others that their ownership stake would decrease as Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Lutnick, agreed to invest more money in the company and take a majority stake.
“I feel terrible that this happened when I introduced you to this investment,” Mitchell wrote. He did not respond to a request for comment.
AdFin eventually went bankrupt, and Lutnick appears to have lost money as well.
Even as they invested together, the men’s relationships emerged in more personal ways. In the summer of 2013, an executive at a venture capital firm emailed Epstein to ask his opinion of Lutnick, whom he had just met.
“My neighbor is smart,” Epstein replied.
Later that year, Epstein’s attorney obtained Lutnick’s nanny’s resume and forwarded it to Epstein, according to the emails. The attorney said he tried to arrange a time for Epstein to meet with her. The records do not explain the purpose of the meeting or indicate whether it took place. (A representative for Lutnick said he did not provide the nanny’s resume and did not know how Epstein’s lawyer obtained it.)
In November 2015, Lutnick, who was raising money for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign that year, invited Epstein to a “very intimate fundraiser” for him at Cantor Fitzgerald’s office. Federal campaign contribution records do not show that Epstein personally contributed to Clinton or Trump, who defeated him during this election cycle. Lutnick supported Trump in 2020 and 2024.
But Epstein contributed $50,000 in 2017 to an event in Lutnick’s memory sponsored by the UJA Federation of New York, a charity that supports Jewish causes.
“As a close friend of the Lutnicks, I want to make sure you are aware of the event and have the opportunity to support them,” hedge fund manager and UJA Wall Street chairman John Paulson wrote in a call to potential donors forwarded to him by the Epstein team.
“50 thousand,” Epstein replied.
The donation was made to Epstein’s St. Petersburg hospital, records show. It came from his foundation, Gratitude America Ltd., based in St. Thomas. He did not join, telling his staff that he could fill Lutnick’s desk, nor did he accept the UJA’s offer to write a congratulatory message for Lutnick, but he did agree to be listed under his name in the UJA’s “Hall of Fame.” The charity did not respond to a request for comment.
The last interactions between Lutnick and Epstein shown in the records — albeit through Epstein’s assistant — took place in 2018, when he was proposing a construction plan for the Frick Collection, the museum across the street from their home.
“Are you aware that they are building to block our view of the park,” Lutnick wrote in an email that an assistant forwarded to Epstein. he wrote. “What should we do about this? Time is of the essence.”
Epstein wrote that he was unaware. The assistant forwarded this to Lutnick, and then Epstein returned to Lutnick’s request that he write a letter and hire an attorney to fight the project.
“I will,” Epstein replied.
His assistant wrote to Lutnick: “Jeffrey replied: IT WILL BE DONE!”
This article was first published in The New York Times.
