Howard Lutnick, the billionaire businessman who serves as President Trump’s commerce secretary, once planned a trip to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, according to documents that the Justice Department released on Friday.
The planned visit in 2012 came years after Mr. Lutnick has said he severed ties with Mr. Epstein.
In December 2012, the records show, Mr. Lutnick sent an email to Mr. Epstein saying that he had a group of people — including his wife and children and another family — who were visiting the Caribbean. He asked where Mr. Epstein was located and whether they could visit for a meal.
Mr. Epstein replied through an assistant to give more information about the location of Little St. James, his private island off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. They eventually settled on plans for a lunch gathering.
Prominent people who were close to Mr. Epstein have been scrutinized in recent years for their visits to Little St. James, but Mr. Lutnick’s planned visit had not been previously disclosed. Reached by phone on Friday, Mr. Lutnick said he could not comment about the island visit because he had not seen the latest Epstein documents.
“I spent zero time with him,” Mr. Lutnick said. He then hung up.
The documents suggest the visit did occur. The gathering was set for Dec. 23, 2012. A day later, an assistant to Mr. Epstein forwarded Mr. Lutnick a message from Mr. Epstein: “Nice seeing you,” it said.
In a podcast interview last year, Mr. Lutnick claimed that around 2005, he and his wife had been so revolted by Mr. Epstein that they decided not to associate with him again.
Mr. Lutnick said in the interview that Mr. Epstein invited them to tour his Upper East Side mansion, next door to Mr. Lutnick’s own home. When they noticed a massage table in the middle of a room, Mr. Lutnick recalled, Mr. Epstein explained that he received “the right kind of massage” every day. Mr. Lutnick said that he and his wife quickly left and decided to “never be in a room with that disgusting person ever again.”
“So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy,” Mr. Lutnick said in the interview with Pod Force One. “If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, because he’s gross.”
Before they connected in December 2012, an assistant to Mr. Epstein had reached out to Mr. Lutnick. “Jeffrey requested I please pass along some phone numbers to you so the two of you can possibly get together,” the assistant wrote the month before.
Mr. Lutnick planned the Caribbean excursion along with his wife, Allison. She explained in an email that they would be arriving on a 188-foot yacht called “Excellence.”
The documents show that Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Epstein’s lives continued to overlap in more recent years. In 2017, Mr. Epstein contributed to a charity dinner honoring Mr. Lutnick. In 2018, they exchanged emails that appear to discuss them joining forces to battle construction plans by The Frick Collection, a museum across the street from both of their homes.
Ana Swanson contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Mike Baker is a national investigative reporter for The Times, based in Seattle.
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