Lutnick's Epstein Bombshell

5 Oct 2025 •

Trump Commerce Secretary says Epstein's friends "participated" and Epstein used his blackmail tapes to negotiate his 2008 sweetheart deal.

For years, one crucial question has been hanging over the Jeffrey Epstein case:

Is it possible — is it even conceivable — that Donald Trump could have been such a close friend of Epstein for so many years without realizing his BFF was committing horrendous sex crimes on a daily basis?

Listening to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's new interview with Miranda Devine for the New York Post's "Pod Force One" podcast, the answer quickly becomes clear:

Based on Lutnick's view of the case, it would, indeed, have been impossible for a man as close to Jeffrey Epstein as Donald Trump not to know what was going on at the notorious child rapist's homes.

According to Lutnick, those who hung around with Epstein with any kind of frequency didn't just know what was happening, "they participated."

8 crucial takeaways from Lutnick's "Pod Force One" interview

In his 69-minute interview with a friendly podcaster from a Trump-aligned, Murdoch-owned organ:

Lutnick appears eager to talk about Jeffrey Epstein: The topic is brought up immediately and Lutnick laughs affably, unfazed by the question, which he probably approved in advance. He jumps at the opportunity to squelch any rumors about his relationship with the notorious sex trafficker — rumors that grew louder when Ghislaine Maxwell told Todd Blanche in July that multiple friends of Epstein were currently serving in Trump's cabinet.
Lutnick claims he's been a friend of Trump's for 34 years — at least 10 of which he spent living next door to Epstein in New York: Lutnick, now 64, says he was 30 and Trump was 45 when their paths began crossing at New York charity events and they started hanging out together. In 1998, Lutnick purchased the townhouse literally next door to Epstein's notorious New York City mansion on East 71st Street, moving into it several years later. Lutnick still owns the house.
Lutnick decided after one meeting with Epstein that Trump's longtime friend was "disgusting" and "gross": After moving into 11 East 71st in 2005, Lutnick shared a wall with Epstein, who lived at number 9. Invited for coffee, Lutnick and his wife were, almost immediately, shown the massage room in the middle of his house. Epstein told Lutnick he enjoyed the "right kind of massage" in that room "every day." The Lutnicks left quickly and Lutnick decided that Epstein was so "disgusting" and "gross" that he would never be in the same room with him ever again.
Lutnick was friends with Trump during Trump's most active years as a sexual predator: Left unsaid during Lutnick's interview with Miranda Devine — but worth noting here — is the fact that Lutnick remained friends with Trump during Trump's own most disgusting and gross years of sexual predation. In the 1990s and beyond, Trump committed numerous sex crimes, many of which he bragged about in interviews with Howard Stern or confessed to on tape to Billy Bush in the Access Hollywood tapes. In recent years, a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and he was also convicted on 34 felony counts for business crimes to conceal his 2006 affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels from voters during the 2016 election. At a minimum, Lutnick's continued allegiance to serial sex predator Trump, who flew on Epstein's jet at least 7 times and whose known victims have been children as well as adults, seems odd given Lutnick's claimed aversion to the "pervert" Epstein.
Lutnick believes Epstein made sex tapes of his friends and was "the greatest blackmailer ever": Given his close proximity to Epstein and Trump over so many years, it's no surprise that Howard Lutnick has developed a strong theory of the Epstein case. In one of his most widely reported responses to Devine, he states his belief that many men "participated" in the massages offered by Epstein and that "what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video." These comments put him at odds with the claims being made by current DOJ and FBI leaders Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, who claimed in July there was no evidence that Epstein blackmailed people. Lutnick is also contradicting Epstein's former best friend Donald Trump, who now claims, despite being spotted entering and leaving Epstein's sex parties numerous times, it's all a "hoax."
Lutnick praises Trump as "an incredible negotiator": Once the conversation moves on from Epstein (and perhaps to make up for the trouble he realizes he's caused his boss), Lutnick praises Trump effusively as "one of the great businessmen of the world" and an "incredible negotiator." He repeats the lie about the 2020 election being stolen and says Trump's has assembled "the best cabinet that anybody any president has ever had." The over-the-top nature of all that praise is especially laughable in a week when "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth humiliated America and all its top military leaders and "incredible negotiator" Trump failed to cut a deal to keep the U.S. government open.
Lutnick believes "there was a trade for the videos" in 2008 to protect Epstein's friends": Lutnick's praise for Trump's negotiation skills may be more warranted when we look back on what he said to Devine about Epstein's skills as blackmailer. Because something was clearly negotiated back in 2008 when future Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta negotiated a "sweetheart deal" with Jeffrey Epstein that replaced a planned federal indictment with a state plea that ultimately resulted in Epstein serving only 13 months of an 18-month sentence. Epstein's sentence, illegally negotiated behind the backs of victims, was so cushy that the sex offender was allowed to go to his office every day, as long as he returned to jail every night. Lutnick confidently tells Devine: "My assumption is there was a trade for the videos because there were people on those videos." Interestingly, the prosecutor in the case, Alex Acosta, was later named Trump's Labor Secretary, while one of the lawyers who negotiated the deal for Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, later represented Trump during his first impeachment trial.
Lutnick says his kids have empathy for everyone because they saw him cry so much after 9/11: Before becoming Commerce Secretary, Lutnick was best known for being the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that lost 658 of its 960 employees, including Lutnick's brother Gary, in the 9/11 attacks that destroyed New York's World Trade Center. Lutnick speaks movingly and at length about the tragedy and its aftermath, telling Devine that he cried every day until October 21st, 2004, a date his wife wrote down so they would not forget it. Lutnick says his kids have empathy from seeing their dad cry so much as they were growing up: "They know when they meet you and say hello that you're putting on a strong facade." As moving as this story continues to be, it stands in stark contrast to the lack of empathy for Epstein's victims expressed earlier in the conversation. Minimizing their trauma is, of course, what Trump and his entire administration continue to do.

Why was Epstein given a "sweetheart deal" that protected all of his powerful friends, Trump included?

Following Lutnick's "bombshell" remarks to Miranda Devine, Rep. Jasmine Crockett told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that she would like to call back former federal prosecutor in Florida Alex Acosta "in a deposition setting" along with other people on the 2007 federal team "who flew in from DC" to overrule the line prosecutor who had drafted a 53-page indictment. Crockett notes that the federal indictment was "kicked down" to the state level without the required notification to Epstein's victims, who are still being refused access to their own files and their own statements.

Ghislaine Maxwell lit a fuse when she hinted in her July interview with Trump fixer Todd Blanche that he could find a few Jeffrey Epstein associates hiding in plain sight in Trump's cabinet.

Perhaps Lutnick's main motive for doing this interview was to clear his name as a "cabinet member" with a known close association to Epstein.

But Lutnick is so closely tied to the key figures in this case — Trump and Epstein — that it's hard to imagine he hasn't paid close attention to its unfolding revelations.

Lutnick showed up to this interview willing to speak with incredible confidence about his theory of the case — and did it in a way that clearly implicates his current boss.

In this one interview, Lutnick made the case more forcefully than anyone yet that Trump not only knew, as he said in 2002, that Epstein liked women "on the younger side," but that Trump also shared, as he wrote in his birthday letter to Epstein in 2003, "certain things in common" with the notorious child rapist.

In the context of Lutnick's revelation that Epstein circa 2005 enjoyed "the right kind of massage... every day," Trump's concluding birthday wish to his "pal" in 2003 — "may every day be a wonderful secret" — becomes even more sinister and conspiratorial.

No wonder House Democrats are demanding Lutnick testifies before the Oversight Committee about "his knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes."

The fuse that Ghislaine Maxwell lit in July has caused an explosion.

Once again, Pam Bondi's attempted coverup of the Epstein Files scandal has blown up in Trump's face.

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