Howard Lutnick evasive during Epstein testimony, House Democrats say

Howard Lutnick said he stopped talking to Jeffrey Epstein in 2005. But a House inquiry wants to know why investigative files show otherwise.

Over the years, the households of New York financier Jeffrey Epstein and billionaire businessman Howard 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 his private Caribbean island. Or seven months later, when an aide to then-Prince Andrew wanted Epstein’s opinion about Lutnick, then the CEO of the Wall Street brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.