Over the years, the households of New York financierJeffrey Epsteinand billionaire businessmanHoward Lutnick, now the U.S. commerce secretary, overlapped in seemingly conventional ways, like the need for a good painter. Another time, Epstein received the résumé for Lutnick’s nanny.
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They were, after all, next-door neighbors for more than a decade in an elite Upper East Side enclave of Manhattan.
But their lives also intersected in far more influential or personal ways, such as when, in 2012, Lutnick, his wife and their four young children sailed on a yacht to have lunch with Epstein on hisprivate Caribbean island. Or seven months later, when an aide tothen-Prince Andrewwanted Epstein’s opinion about Lutnick, then the CEO of the Wall Street brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.
“What is your view on Howard Lutnick? Just met him with PA,” wrote the aide, referring to Andrew, who was angling to do business with Cantor Fitzgerald.
“My neighbor smart,” Epstein replied.
The relationship between Lutnick and Epstein spans years both before and after Epstein was convicted in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida. Their email communications, which were sporadic, are in the millions of pages of Epstein investigation documentsthe Justice Department releasedthis year.
The files show Lutnick reaching out to Epstein as early as 2009 and contacting him as late as 2018. Their interactions weren’t robust, but they remained in touch, including through phone calls and charity galas.
Lutnick has denied any wrongdoing. He has not been accused of any impropriety tied to Epstein.
But he has offered shifting accounts about their relationship, initially saying in recent years that he had no association with Epstein. Lutnick said he had cut ties with his neighbor in 2005 because he believed he was a “disgusting person.” Then, after the Justice Department files were released, he acknowledged visiting Epstein’s island.
The extent of Lutnick’s personal association with Epstein, whodied by suicidein a New York City jail in 2019 while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges, will be the focus Wednesday of a Capitol Hill inquiry.
Lutnick voluntarily agreed to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the committee’s chairman, making him the latest to testify before the bipartisan panel investigating the federal government’s handling of the case against Epstein.
Lutnick, who left Cantor Fitzgerald last year after President Donald Trump named him commerce secretary, isamong at least a half-dozen top officialsin the Trump administration, including the president himself, whose names appear in the files. Trump, who has not been accused of any crime in connection with Epstein and denies any wrongdoing, has acknowledged being friendly with him before they had a falling-out about two decades ago, years before Epstein became a convicted sex offender.
Some congressional Democrats have accused Lutnick of lying and called on him toresign or be fired. His appearance in the files has also prompted students at Haverford College, Lutnick’s alma mater in Pennsylvania, todemand his name be strippedfrom the private liberal art school’s library.
