WASHINGTON — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a former neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein who visited the disgraced financier on his Caribbean island, on Wednesday became the first sitting cabinet member to testify to the U.S. House committee investigating the sex offender’s crimes and possible lapses in the law enforcement response.

Lutnick came under fire earlier this year after documents released by the Justice Department revealed the former chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP visited Epstein’s island in 2012, years after Epstein’s conviction for the procurement of minors for prostitution.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters on Wednesday that Lutnick “wasn’t 100% truthful” in prior public statements about whether he had visited Epstein’s island but added he hadn’t seen any evidence of wrongdoing by the Commerce secretary.

Democrats challenged the credibility of Lutnick’s testimony to the committee. Several of the Democrats mocked Lutnick’s clear recollection of a 2005 meeting with Epstein but inability to recall details of his visit to Epstein’s private island seven years later.

“It was contortions and lies and no acknowledgment that he misled the American public,” Representative Ro Khanna of California told reporters.

Lutnick arrived at a Capitol office building on Wednesday morning surrounded by security and aides and did not respond to reporters’ shouted questions. He testified behind closed doors and left after about four and a half hours, again ignoring reporters on the way out.

The committee plans to release a transcript in the coming days. The panel so far hasn’t taken any testimony on Epstein in open public hearings.

A Commerce spokesperson said beforehand that Lutnick looked forward to addressing the committee’s questions on the record and called any claims against him baseless and inaccurate.

The Justice Department files include what appear to be business agreements between Lutnick and Epstein as well as a photo of Epstein, Lutnick and three other men standing near an oceanside cliff. An email to Epstein in the files includes a résumé for Lutnick’s nanny, though the Commerce secretary has denied providing that document himself.

The materials have not indicated any wrongdoing on Lutnick’s part, but appeared to contradict prior statements from the commerce secretary that he severed ties with Epstein in 2005.

“I have done nothing wrong and I want to set the record straight,” Lutnick said in a statement he released after agreeing to testify to the panel.

Democrats had called on the House Oversight Committee to subpoena testimony from Lutnick. The Commerce secretary volunteered to come in and worked quickly to schedule his appearance, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the interview.

Representative Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat, called Lutnick’s testimony “absolutely mind-boggling” and called on the secretary to resign.

“He was evasive, nervous, he was dishonest,” Subramanyam said.

Comer said at mid-day Lutnick was “very forthcoming” in his testimony.

“We’ll continue our investigation and if we find that there were any misstatements by Lutnick, it’s a felony to lie to Congress and he’ll be held accountable,” he said.

Lutnick, during congressional testimony in February, insisted that there was nothing inappropriate about his visit to Epstein’s island.

“We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies, and my wife, all together. We were on family vacation, we were not apart,” Lutnick said. “To suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012, I don’t recall why we did it, but we did.”

President Donald Trump has also faced criticism over his ties to Epstein but has denied any wrongdoing. Trump has defended his commerce secretary.

“He’s an innocent guy, doing a good job,” Trump told reporters in February.

Lutnick refused to answer a question from the congressional committee about whether he had spoken with Trump about what he would say in his testimony, said Representative James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat.

In a New York Post podcast interview last year, Lutnick said he had severed ties with Epstein in 2005 after the financier made a comment about massages during a tour of his home. Lutnick and Epstein lived next door to each other in townhouses on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Lutnick said on the podcast that he and his wife agreed after the 2005 incident as they walked back to their home afterward to never be in a room again with Epstein.

“So I was never in the room with him, socially, for business or even philanthropy,” he said. “If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, because he’s gross.”

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to Florida state charges of procurement of a minor for prostitution in a deal negotiated with then-US Attorney Alexander Acosta to avoid more serious federal sex trafficking charges at the time.

Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on later federal sex trafficking charges. Authorities ruled the death a suicide.

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(With assistance from Derek Wallbank.)

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