Howard Lutnick To Sit For Questioning In House Panel's Epstein Probe Next Month

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will voluntarily meet pinch nan House Oversight Committee connected May 6 to reply questions astir his relationship to nan precocious activity offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a root acquainted pinch nan schedule.

Oversight Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., announced successful early March that Lutnick had “proactively agreed to look voluntarily before” nan panel. But a day had not been group until now.

CNN first reported nan day of Lutnick’s interview.

The Commerce Department did not instantly respond to a petition for remark Monday night.

Lutnick had been a adjacent doorway neighbour of Epstein’s successful New York City, and told nan New York Post past twelvemonth that he decided successful 2005 that nan politically connected financier was “disgusting” and wanted thing to do pinch him aft he made an inappropriate remark while hosting Lutnick and his woman astatine his townhouse successful 2005.

“So I was ne'er successful nan room pinch him socially, for business aliases moreover philanthropy. That feline was there, I wasn’t going ’cause he is gross,” Lutnick told nan paper.

Files released by nan Justice Department, however, showed that Lutnick and his family visited Epstein’s land successful 2012 — 4 years aft Epstein pleaded blameworthy to procuring a personification nether 18 for adultery and felony inducement of adultery — and that he appeared to induce Epstein to a mini Hillary Clinton fundraiser successful 2015.

At a Senate proceeding earlier this year, Lutnick said he couldn’t callback why he took nan travel to nan land but location was thing “untoward” astir it.

Of his upcoming interview, Lutnick told Axios past month, “I look guardant to appearing earlier nan committee. I person done thing incorrect and I want to group nan grounds straight.”

Lutnick has not been accused of immoderate wrongdoing by authorities successful relationship pinch Epstein.