Trump Commerce Sec. Lutnick admits visiting Epstein island during family vacation
Trump administration Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted Tuesday that he and his family had lunch on notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private island years ago.
“I had lunch with him while we were on a boat going on a family vacation,” Lutnick said in 2012. Testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“My wife, my four children and my nannies were with me,” he said. “I had another couple, and they were there with their kids.”
“And we had lunch on the island for an hour, that’s true,” he said.
“And we set off with all my children, my nannies and my wife. We were on a family vacation,” he said.
The secretary’s admission comes as he faces bipartisan calls to resign following the release of records showing his business and personal relationship with Epstein was more extensive than previously known.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testifies at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing in Washington, DC, on February 10, 2026. Lutnick has faced bipartisan calls to resign following revelations in the latest release of the Epstein files.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Lutnick previously said he broke off his relationship with Epstein after 2005; This was years before Epstein pleaded guilty to a state-level charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008, requiring him to register as a sex offender.
But an analysis of the latest Epstein files released by the Justice Department shows that Lutnick and Epstein remained in contact years later.
Documents show that in December 2012, Epstein invited Lutnick to lunch on his private island in the Caribbean. The two men also had business dealings as recently as 2014. CBS News reported.
Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges.
In testimony Tuesday morning before the Appropriations panel’s subcommittee on commerce, justice, science and related agencies, Lutnick insisted he had “almost nothing to do with this person.”
“I am happy to be here to make clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when I moved into the house next door to him in New York,” the cabinet secretary said in her statement.
“Over the next 14 years I met him two more times, twice as far as I can remember,” he said. “I met him six years later, and I met him a year and a half later, and I never met him again.”
“There could probably be 10 emails in total — and you’ve seen all of these millions and millions of documents — connecting me to him… over a 14-year period.”
“I never had any contact with him,” Lutnick said.
The subcommittee’s ranking member, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. He responded: “There is no indication that you committed any wrongdoing against Jeffrey Epstein. It is a fact that . . . you misled the country and Congress based on your previous statements suggesting that you had cut off all communications when in fact you had not.”
Asked if Van Hollen saw anything inappropriate during his visit to the island, Lutnick said he did not.
“All I saw of my wife, my children, and the other couple and their children were the staff working for Mr. Epstein on that island,” he testified.
Van Hollen asked whether Lutnick would commit to sharing his own records on Epstein with Congress to “make sure the dossier is complete.”
“I’ll definitely talk about it. I hadn’t thought about it,” Lutnick said, adding, “I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing.”
