Senate Democrats admonished Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Wednesday for failing to answer their questions about his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein and what he knew about the late convicted sex offender’s purported interest in a Lutnick family nanny.
Lutnick appeared before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to testify about President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget request. But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., used the occasion to try to get answers he has been seeking for months from Lutnick, who dodged the questions.
Van Hollen reminded the commerce secretary that he had told senators in February that he “had nothing to hide” — to which Lutnick replied, “That is right.”
“So why have you not responded to the letter that Sen. [Jeffrey] Merkley and I sent following up on the last hearing asking for documents” related to Lutnick’s meetings and correspondence with Epstein in light of Justice Department files revealing their friendship, Van Hollen asked.
Lutnick replied that he was “here today to testify about the budget” but would be returning to Congress early next month for his scheduled interview with the House Oversight Committee about Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail in 2019.
“I am volunteering within two weeks to answer any and all questions on this topic,” Trump’s commerce secretary said Wednesday.
Lutnick’s appearance in the Epstein files, along with those of many other prominent individuals — including President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Bill Gates — does not imply guilt. Lutnick has denied any wrongdoing.
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Van Hollen also rebuked Lutnick in February over his repeated mention in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, which revealed the disgraced financier and the current Trump Cabinet official had ties long after 2005, when Lutnick said he had severed them.
Lutnick, a former Wall Street investment banker and executive, admitted in February that he visited Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands with his wife, children and nannies in 2012.
After emails from the files showed that Epstein appeared interested in meeting a nanny who worked for the Lutnick family, Van Hollen and Merkley, D-Ore., asked Lutnick in their Feb. 27 letter, “Are you aware of Mr. Epstein taking interest in any of your nannies or other employees or obtaining any of their resumes or other personal information about them?”
The commerce secretary told Van Hollen on Wednesday that he and other senators could give their questions related to the Epstein files to “your House colleagues and I am going to answer them all.”
“Again, the reason I’m asking this question at this hearing is because we didn’t get a response to the letter,” Van Hollen said in response to Lutnick. “No response, at all, to that earlier letter.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.