Dems demand Lutnick’s resignation over Jeffrey Epstein interview

House Democrats on Thursday called for the resignation of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, alleging he lied publicly about his relationship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and later refused to “come clean.” closed door interview.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Democratic minority said, “The facts are clear: You lied to the American people and attempted to conceal your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in your public statements.” Said in a letter to Lutnik.

“Your lack of candor demonstrates that you are unfit to perform the essential duties as Commerce Secretary, and you should step down immediately,” the letter, signed by all 21 Democratic members of the panel, said.

Lutnik claimed Said in an interview last year that, after a visit to Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2005 shortly after he moved into the neighborhood, he had “decided that I would never be in a room with that disgusting man.”

“So I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy,” Lutnick said in that interview. “If that guy was there, I wouldn’t go, because he’s dirty.”

But the relationship between the two men continued years after the Justice Department released Epstein-related files, with Lutnick admitting in a Senate hearing that he and his family had lunch on the disgraced financier’s private island in 2012.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a state-level charge of soliciting the prostitution of a minor, which required him to register as a sex offender. He died in a New York City jail in 2019 while facing federal sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.

The Democrats wrote in Thursday’s letter that Lutnick’s claims in the 2025 interview were “patently false.”

“During your written interview, you were presented with clear evidence that you corresponded and physically met with Epstein on multiple occasions prior to his arrest in 2019,” including a private island lunch, they wrote.

“Given the opportunity to explain yourself during the interview,” the lawmakers wrote, “instead you offered incredible innuendo and semantic games.”

A Commerce Department spokesperson called the letter “another failed attempt by congressional Democrats to distract from Secretary Lutnick’s historic work at the Commerce Department” in a statement to CNBC.

“In a voluntary appearance before the Oversight Committee, Secretary Lutnick answered approximately 400 questions from members and staff, ending only when members said they had nothing more to ask,” the spokesperson said.

“He repeatedly explained that there was no connection to the three encounters, and the committee adjourned without identifying any evidence to the contrary. Demands for his resignation are baseless and politically motivated.”

The White House said in February that President Donald Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his past friendship with Epstein, stands behind Lutnick.

Lutnick testified before the House Oversight Committee behind closed doors on May 6. He told the committee that he was participating voluntarily, even though he was under pressure from Representative Nancy Mace, R-S.C. After agreeing to appear, she said she would issue a statement. bipartisan subpoena To compel his testimony.

The transcript of the interview shows Lutnick saying he remembers meeting with Epstein three times, including conversations in 2005 and 2012.

In 2011, Epstein’s staff contacted me and “suggested that he had a reason to contact me,” Lutnick said. It was arranged, the secretary said, that Lutnick, while walking his wife and dogs on a Sunday afternoon, would ring Epstein’s doorbell “to hear what he had to say.”

“My best recollection is this: I rang the bell, sat in her lobby with my dog, waited for her to come downstairs, listened to what she had to say and went away. As far as I remember, it was about the scaffold. It was meaningless and irrelevant,” he told the committee.

Under questioning, Lutnick denied that he was misleading about his relationship with Epstein, and insisted that the use of the word “I” versus “we” was an important distinction.

“I was accurate. I think I described it accurately. I don’t want it to be changed in any way. It was that I wouldn’t be in the room with them socially, which I wasn’t; for business, which I wasn’t; or philanthropically, which I wasn’t. So I believe what I said was accurate. I believe what I said when I said it was accurate, and I believe it now. That’s why I didn’t say it.” That ‘we’ will never happen. I said ‘I’ will never happen.”

A questioner replied, “We all understand you were in the room with him in a social setting, but you insist that this sentence is accurate. So I just – it doesn’t make sense at first glance.”

Lutnick later said, “I was never with her, meaning, I was never in any situation with her. I was with my wife. And they were meaningless and unimportant. But contextually, so people can understand, I was never with her in any other way. I, Howard Lutnick, a person, was never in any situation. So you can’t take it out of context. I was never with her.”

“No sane person would accept this account,” the Democrats wrote Thursday.

He wrote, “The most basic obligation a Cabinet secretary has to Congress is candor; your statements impact the lives of all Americans. You used the congressional interview not to correct the record, but to perpetuate a false public narrative.”

“You contradicted prior statements and dodged basic questions. A Secretary who will paraphrase plain English to avoid acknowledging his words, claims to have no memory of a documented visit to a convicted sex offender’s private island, and refuses to answer basic questions about his interactions with the President cannot be trusted to serve as a leader in the federal government.”

“We therefore call on you to immediately resign from the post of Commerce Secretary,” he wrote.