President Trump on Thursday said he was not aware that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick visited Epstein Island with his family in 2012, but defended the Secretary’s visit.
According to emails, in December 2012, Lutnick was invited to the island with his wife and children, likely to discuss business dealings related to a company called Adfin.
“I actually haven’t spoken to him about it,” Trump told reporters after saying he “wasn’t aware of it.”
“But from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children, and I guess in some cases, some people were. I wasn’t. I was never there. Somebody will someday say that. I was never there.”
WATCH:
Reporter: Mr. President, were you aware that the Secretary of Commerce visited Epstein’s Island?
Trump: No, I wasn’t aware of it. No, I didn’t– I actually haven’t spoken to him about it. I wasn’t. But from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children, and I guess in some cases, some people were. I wasn’t. I was never there. Somebody will someday say that. I was never there.
This comes as new reporting shows that Howard Lutnick’s former company was in business with Epstein as recently as 2014 and that Lutnick visited Epstein’s private island in 2012, after claiming he had “limited interactions” with Epstein, whom he cut ties with in 2005.
A spokesperson for Lutnick said of the report, “This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments including securing trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker. Secretary Lutnick had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”
Per CBS:
Lutnick and Epstein each signed on behalf of limited liability companies that agreed on Dec. 28, 2012, to acquire stakes in a now-shuttered advertising technology company called Adfin, documents released among the so-called Epstein files show.
Epstein and Lutnick’s signatures appear on neighboring pages in the contract, with Epstein signing for his Southern Trust Company, Inc. and Lutnick for a limited liability company called CVAFH I. The documents list nine shareholders in total.
Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald who at one point lived next door to Epstein, told the New York Post in October that he and his wife Allison had cut ties with Epstein in 2005, deciding after taking a tour of Epstein’s New York townhouse, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”
However, it appears Epstein and Lutnick continued to maintain contact and emails show they arranged calls and planned to have drinksin 2011.
Jordan Conradson, formerly TGP’s Arizona correspondent, is currently on assignment in Washington DC. Jordan has played a critical role in exposing fraud and corruption in Arizona’s elections and elected officials. His reporting on election crimes in Maricopa County led to the resignation of one election official, and he was later banned from the Maricopa County press room for his courage in pursuit of the truth. TGP and Jordan finally gained access after suing Maricopa County, America’s fourth largest county, and winning at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Conradson looks forward to bringing his aggressive style of journalism to the Swamp.
You can email Jordan Conradson here, and read more of Jordan Conradson’s articles here.
