Trump claims ignorance of Lutnick’s Epstein island go to after which says he heard ‘he was there with his wife and children’ | EUROtoday

President Donald Trump on Thursday stated he didn’t learn about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s 2012 journey to pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous personal island however then informed a reporter he had heard about particulars oif the journey.

Speaking from the Roosevelt Room throughout an occasion to announce the repeal of a longstanding local weather rule reviled by the fossil gas trade, Trump was requested if he’d been conscious of Lutnick’s journey to Little Saint James, the small a part of the U.S. Virgin Islands beforehand owned by Epstein, and whether or not he nonetheless has confidence within the former bond buying and selling govt.

“No, I wasn’t aware of it … I actually haven’t spoken to him about it … but from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children,” Trump stated, simply days after Lutnick was pressured to confess he had traveled to the infamous locale.

He added: “I was never there — somebody will someday say that I was never there.”

Trump notably didn’t reply the second a part of the query as as to if he has confidence in Lutnick, a longtime pal who had pushed to turn out to be Treasury Secretary after serving because the finance chief for the president’s 2024 marketing campaign.

The commerce secretary has lengthy been identified to have had ties to Epstein, who was his next-door neighbor in New York at one level, years earlier than he pleaded responsible to prostitution expenses in Florida as a part of a sweetheart cope with a George W Bush-era prosecutor who later grew to become Trump’s first Secretary of Labor throughout his first time period.

In October, he informed the New York Post that he’d reduce off contact with Epstein — who died in a New York jail cell whereas awaiting intercourse trafficking expenses in 2019 — after a 2005 encounter that he claimed had left him so unsettled that he’d vowed to “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

But paperwork launched by the Justice Department this yr that have been reviewed by The Independent present that Lutnick not solely maintained ties with Epstein as late as 2018 — the yr earlier than he was indicted on federal intercourse trafficking expenses and lengthy after he’d hung out in jail for state-level offenses associated to his preying on younger ladies — however even organized a go to to Epstein’s island in 2012.

Lutnick grudgingly admitted to visiting the notorious landmass, which is a part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on Tuesday beneath questioning from Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen.

“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” he stated.

“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 … I don’t recall why we did it.”

Lutnick additionally claimed in his testimony that he “did not have any relationship with” Epstein and “barely had anything to do with that person.”

Trump’s feedback about Lutnick got here simply days after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt abruptly reduce brief a briefing with reporters after being requested in regards to the commerce secretary’s Epstein ties.

Leavitt was roughly 20 minutes into one in all her common briefings with the White House press corps on Tuesday when a reporter requested whether or not President Donald Trump would stand behind Lutnick after his admission to the Senate Commerce Committee hours earlier.

She replied that Trump “fully supports” Lutnick and described him as “a very important member of President Trump’s team.”

But as an alternative of permitting reporters to probe additional into Trump’s views on Lutnick, or ask every other additional questions, Leavitt launched right into a monologue chastising reporters for not asking about numerous optimistic statistics touted by the administration on problems with significance to the president earlier than storming out together with her aides in tow.