Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will voluntarily meet with the House Oversight Committee on May 6 to answer questions about his connection to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a source familiar with the schedule.
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., announced in early March that Lutnick had “proactively agreed to appear voluntarily before” the panel. But a date had not been set until now.
CNN first reported the date of Lutnick’s interview.
The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.
Lutnick, who had been a next-door neighbor of Epstein’s in New York City, told the New York Post last year that he decided in 2005 that the politically connected financier was “disgusting” and that he wanted nothing to do with him after Epstein made an inappropriate remark while he was hosting Lutnick and his wife at his townhouse in 2005.
“So I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy. That guy was there, I wasn’t going ’cause he is gross,” Lutnick told the paper.
Files released by the Justice Department, however, showed that Lutnick and his family visited Epstein’s island in 2012 — four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and felony solicitation of prostitution — and that he appeared to invite Epstein to a small Hillary Clinton fundraiser in 2015.
At a Senate hearing this year, Lutnick said that he couldn’t recall why he took the trip to the island but that there was nothing “untoward” about it.
Of his upcoming interview, he told Axios last month: “I look forward to appearing before the committee. I have done nothing wrong and I want to set the record straight.”
Authorities have not accused Lutnick of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
