Democrat calls Howard Lutnick a 'pathological liar' after closed-door Epstein testimony

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‘I have nothing to hide’: Secretary pushes back as lawmaker questions Epstein meetings

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faces questions about past contact with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he insists he has "nothing to hide" while declining to address specifics during a tense Capitol Hill exchange. (Credit: C-SPAN)

Congressional Democrats hammered Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for lying about his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after he admitted his relationship with Epstein lasted longer than he previously disclosed.

Lutnick participated in a voluntary closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about Epstein as part of the panel’s probe into the disgraced financier.

"I feel very comfortable saying that Howard Lutnick is a pathological liar," Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., said when she left the room in the middle of the Capitol Hill testimony to give reporters an update.

She claimed the Trump official is complicit in "the most egregious cover up in American history."

Rep. Yassamin Ansari called Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick a "pathological liar" during his testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. (Jason Wise/Getty Images for Green New Deal Network ; Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

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Democratic lawmakers, who have seized on the Epstein saga after largely ignoring it under former President Joe Biden, accused Lutnick of stonewalling their questions during their sit-down.

"If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick," Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., insisted. "He's lost all credibility, and really it's a shame that the American people don't get to see what he did there — total lack of truth and lack of honesty."

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., accused Democrats of lying about Lutnick’s testimony, which he characterized as "very forthcoming" — thought admitted he was not "100% truthful" in the past.

"The only cover-up that I've seen on the Oversight Committee is the cover-up of the Democrats trying to cover up our investigations of the Metro Police Department lying about crime statistics, and the cover-up of the Minnesota fraud by Tim Walz and Keith Ellison and the cover-up of the hospice fraud in California," Comer said, referring to several active probes under his purview.

A source familiar told Fox News that Lutnick told the panel that he only met Epstein three times. Lutnick never saw Epstein with young women or witnessed anything inappropriate with young women, the source added.

Lutnick did not respond to reporters’ questions outside the Oversight Committee room on Wednesday.

An undated photo released by the Department of Justice shows Jeffrey Epstein, center, and Howard Lutnick, center right, in blue shirt and white shorts. (Department of Justice)

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Democrats in Congress have argued that Lutnick’s acknowledgment of a brief lunch visit to Epstein’s Caribbean island in 2012 with his wife, children and nannies after previously claiming he cut off ties seven years earlier undermines his credibility.

Lutnick told the New York Post last year that he had no contact with Epstein after 2005 when he and his wife had a brief meeting in the disgraced financier’s apartment and saw the massage table.

However, Epstein files that were released this year showed that Lutnick’s relationship with Epstein extended well beyond that. The Commerce secretary told the House panel that his short visit to Epstein’s island was "unsettling" because he did not know how Epstein’s assistant knew that he and his family were vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands at the time.

The two were next-door neighbors from 2005 until 2019 when Epstein died by suicide in a New York correctional center after being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges. 

A spokesperson for the Commerce Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry on lawmakers' classification of Lutnick's testimony.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testified Wednesday that he only met the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein three times, despite being next-door neighbors in Manhattan's Upper East Side neighborhood for more than a decade. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Comer acknowledged Wednesday that Lutnick withheld information about the 2012 lunch with Epstein, but argued that his credibility is up to Americans to decide.

"I haven't seen wrongdoing in the email correspondence, but he wasn't 100% truthful with whether or not he had been on the island," Comer told reporters.

"We're going to ask him all these questions, and we'll let the American people judge whether the credibility was damaged or not," he added.

The Trump administration has largely stood by Lutnick amid calls for his resignation from Democrats and a handful of Republicans, including Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was "very forthcoming" in his testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

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Comer also said his unprecedented invitation to invite Lutnick, a Cabinet secretary, to appear before the committee shows the bipartisan nature of the Epstein probe.

"There's never been a chairman bring in Cabinet secretaries of their own party," he told Fox News. "We have Pam Bondi coming in in a couple of weeks. So, I think people can see that this is a bipartisan investigation. We're really sincerely trying to get the truth. Our goal is to provide justice for the victims and hopefully today will be helpful."

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled for a transcribed interview with the committee on May 29. Tech billionaire Bill Gates is slated to testify on June 10.