Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick accused convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein of being “the greatest blackmailer ever” in a new interview, diverging from the Trump Administration’s efforts to downplay concerns over the Epstein case.
Speaking with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine for a podcast episode, the commerce secretary alleged that Epstein could have given federal authorities video footage of his associates receiving massages from young women in return for a controversial 2008 plea deal, though Lutnick admitted that he had “no knowledge” of the situation and didn’t provide any evidence to back up his claim.
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Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 2005, said that Epstein once showed him and his wife a “massage room” in Epstein’s townhouse and made a suggestive comment to them. The commerce secretary said he and his wife decided that he would “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”
“What happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video,” Lutnick said. “This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever, blackmailed people. That’s how he had money.”
“I assume way back when they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18-month sentence,” he alleged. “I mean, he’s a serial sex offender. How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? There must have been a trade.”
“So, my assumption, I have no knowledge, but my assumption is there was a trade for the videos, because there were people on those videos,” he continued.
Amid accusations that he sexually abused young girls, Epstein in 2008 struck a plea deal with the then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta that enabled Epstein to avoid federal prosecution. The lenient deal has since been the subject of widespread scrutiny and conspiracy theories—along with many other aspects of Epstein’s life and case.
Acosta went on to serve as Labor Secretary in Trump’s first Administration, but resigned in 2019 as he faced mounting questions over the plea deal. He has previously defended how he handled Epstein’s case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Epstein case has generated renewed interest in recent months after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo this summer in which they concluded that Epstein didn’t have a “client list” of co-conspirators and that his 2019 death in jail was a suicide, contradicting conspiracy theories surrounding the disgraced financier. The Trump Administration has since grappled with public outrage over its handling of the case, including from the President’s MAGA base.
President Donald Trump himself has faced scrutiny over his years-long friendship with Epstein, after the Wall Street Journal published a story alleging that Trump sent a “bawdy” birthday letter to the now-disgraced financier in 2003. Trump has denied writing the letter, and filed a lawsuit against multiple people and entities connected with the news outlet.
Multiple members of the Trump Administration had previously promoted conspiracy theories related to Epstein’s case, but have walked back those comments as the President and top officials have tried to dismiss the concerns. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have called for transparency, urging the Administration to release the files for the Epstein case.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called for Lutnick to testify before the panel, saying in a social media post on Wednesday that the commerce secretary’s “claims are explosive.”
“We need to speak to him—the entire Oversight committee. We’re very interested in understanding what exactly he knows, where those theories come from,” Garcia said on CNN. “Anyone, particularly if you’re in the Trump Administration and you are saying those comments so freely, you have to have additional information. So you can believe that we’re going to follow up.”