{"id":129387,"date":"2026-02-10T22:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/129387\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T22:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:46:07","slug":"top-trump-official-admits-to-visiting-epsteins-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/129387\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Trump official admits to visiting Epstein\u2019s island"},"content":{"rendered":"

A high-ranking Trump administration official confirmed he and his family visited Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s infamous island during testimony Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the Senate Appropriations Committee that in 2012, \u201cI did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with \u2014 they were there as well, with their children,\u201d Lutnick said. \u201cAnd we had lunch on the island \u2014 that is true \u2014 for an hour. And we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife, all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lutnick\u2019s relationship with Epstein has become clearer in the aftermath of the Epstein files\u2019 release \u2014 though it is suspected three million additional documents need to be published under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. <\/p>\n

The 2012 lunch took place seven years after Lutnick claimed to have distanced himself from the sex offender. <\/p>\n

According to CBS News<\/a>, their relationship continued into 2014 through business ventures the pair worked on. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Lutnick insisted in his testimony that he \u201cdid not have any relationship with him\u201d and that he has \u201cabsolutely nothing\u201d to hide. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved, when I moved to a house next door to him in New York,\u201d Lutnick said. \u201cOver the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times. So, six years later, I met him, and then a year and a half after that, I met him, and never again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A high-ranking Trump administration official confirmed he and his family visited Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s infamous island during testimony Tuesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-129387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}