Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is the first Cabinet official to testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and Democrats on the Oversight Committee briefed the media during Lutnick’s testimony, where they accused the secretary of state of lying to Congress.
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Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) said:
After what we’ve seen so far in this transcribed interview, I feel very comfortable saying that Howard Lutnick is a pathological liar who is enabling the most blatant cover-up in American history.
We’ve now walked with him through the timeline of events in excruciating detail since they met in 2005. Here’s Howard Lutnick and his wife meeting Jeffrey Epstein. He himself described it in detail in a podcast last year, where he said they went to his house, took a tour, and reportedly were so uncomfortable after seeing the massage tables in Jeffrey Epstein’s house that Howard Lutnick went on that podcast to tell the American people that he and my colleagues referred to the definitions that he tried to change of what he meant there, but he said he didn’t would never get involved socially or professionally or be in a room with Jeffrey. Epstein again.
Then in 2012, he took his family and team to Jeffrey Epstein’s island. I’m focusing my questions today on how he could have done this if he and his wife were really that uncomfortable, especially when in 2008 we know that Jeffrey Epstein was charged, and the sweetheart deal took place, for soliciting a minor. Howard Lutnick tried to tell us in this room that he basically knew none of this.
I asked him: How, as a kid at the time, I had seen this all over the media about Jeffrey Epstein, and you, an adult who was this person’s neighbor, who had previous relationships with him, how could you not have known that? I mean, the level of lying that’s going on in this room without video is unbelievable and part of this blatant cover-up. I recommend that every American, when this interview is published, read the document in its entirety. You’ll see Howard Lutnick use expressions like, uh, uh, how inexplicable and disturbing it is that he went to the island. This is how he defines it himself. It’s inexplicable- i- inexplicable how this happened. He also tries to define all of their interactions as, quote, “meaningless and inconsequential.” I think he’s used those terms about 20 times so far and continues to use them.
So I will end by saying that there are real victims here. There are potentially over 1,000 women who were abused and raped as children, and even at the bare minimum, Howard Lutnick knew about these things. He knew it. This just demonstrates the culture of enabling these crimes and allowing rich and powerful people like Jeffrey Epstein and all the other disgusting rich and powerful men who have committed these crimes to continue. Because people like Howard Lutnick knew these things were happening, because they were making headlines everywhere, and they continued to hire and legitimize someone like Jeffrey Epstein.
Howard Lutnick is accused of lying to Congress and changing his story about Epstein, and Democrats have questioned whether Lutnick spoke to Donald Trump before the Commerce secretary’s testimony.
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