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chris van hollen
Trump Commerce Secretary Admits He Did, In Fact, Go to Epstein’s Island
Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Howard Lutnick he "misled the country and the Congress" when he claimed to have cut off ties with the billionaire sex offender.
Feb 10, 2026
President Donald Trump's commerce secretary admitted during a Congressional hearing on Tuesday that he lied to the public about his relationship with the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was his next-door neighbor for 13 years.
As suspicion swirled around the president over his own ties to the infamous predator, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed on a podcast last year that he'd been horrified after meeting Epstein once at his New York City apartment in 2005, during which he said the financier made sexual innuendoes and showed off his massage table to Lutnick and his wife.
Lutnick said he then vowed to “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again." He added: “I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, because he’s gross."
But emails released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) late last month have revealed that Lutnick maintained a relationship with Epstein until 2018, just a year before his death in jail, and a full decade after the financier had been convicted of soliciting an underage prostitute.
Not only did Lutnick meet with Epstein for drinks and meals on multiple occasions and go into business with him, but he also made arrangements in 2012 to meet with Epstein on his private Caribbean island, where victims say sexual abuse of minors was rampant.
After facing bipartisan calls to resign from his post amid the new revelations, Lutnick appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, where he again attempted to wriggle out of the accusation that he'd remained cozy with Epstein.
"Of these millions and millions of documents, there may be 10 connecting me with him... over a 14-year period," Lutnick said. "I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person, OK?"
Unconvinced by the denial, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked Lutnick if he'd ever made the visit to Epstein's island that was outlined in the 2012 email.
Lutnick admitted he did, in fact, have lunch with Epstein during what he described as a "family vacation."
"My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple. They were there as well with their children. And we had lunch on the island," he admitted.
He said they were there for about "an hour" and that nothing "untoward" occurred while he was there. He clarified that he left "with all of my children" and everyone else who'd accompanied him, including their nannies.
Notably, one of those nannies is the subject of another email sent to Epstein from his accountant, Richard Kahn, in 2013. In the email, Kahn tells Epstein: "Attached is a resume of Lutnick's nanny. I am trying to arrange a time... for you to meet her."
During the hearing, Lutnick said he was surprised to learn that the nanny appeared in the email and that, as far as he knows, she never met Epstein.
Van Hollen said that there was reason to believe Lutnick "misled the country and the Congress" when he suggested that he'd cut off all contact with Epstein.
Speaking of Lutnick's meeting at the island, Van Hollen said: "You realize that this visit took place after he'd been convicted. You made a very big point of saying you sensed this was a bad person in 2005, and then, of course, in 2008 he was convicted of soliciting prostitution of a minor. And yet, you went and had this trip and had other interactions."
Van Hollen said that even if Lutnick himself was not accused of wrongdoing with Epstein, the fact that he misled the public is worthy of shame.
“That does call into question your fitness for the job you now hold, and the question of your credibility before this committee and the Congress,” the senator said.
Van Hollen also asked about another gathering mentioned in the emails, which supposedly happened in 2011 and included Lutnick and other prominent figures, such as the filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn. (Previn is the adopted daughter of Allen's ex, Mia Farrow. Another adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused Allen of sexual assault, which he denied.)
After initially denying that the dinner took place, Lutnick said he didn't know what Van Hollen was referring to, then said there was a document in the tranche of files suggesting he'd met with Epstein again for only an hour and that they did not have dinner.
"I looked through the millions of documents for my name just like everybody else," Lutnick said.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) later appeared astonished by that statement.
“No," he said, "everyone isn’t worried about their names being in the Epstein files."
Following the hearing, calls for Lutnick to step down have only grown louder.
"Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s secretary of commerce, lied about his connection to Epstein, helped source a 'nanny' for Epstein, [and] visited rape island AFTER Epstein pled guilty to sex crimes," wrote Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)
McGovern also mentioned a $50,000 donation Epstein made in 2017 to a dinner keepingLutnick and another investor, which was put on by the Jewish philanthropic organization UJA-Federation of New York. Emails show that Epstein was offered 10 seats to attend the event but declined, saying Lutnick could fill them.
"This has gone on long enough," McGovern said. "Lutnick is a liar, and he needs to resign."
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As Critics Condemn 'Murder, Plain and Simple,' Hegseth Backs Admiral Order to Kill Boat Attack Survivors
"Making Adm. Bradley the fall guy in the administration's 'Protect Pete' campaign is disgraceful and destructive," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal. "Hegseth must go—resign or be fired."
Dec 02, 2025
As journalists on Tuesday continued to demand answers about the "double-tap" strike that started an illegal US bombing campaign against alleged drug smuggling boats, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kept pointing the finger at Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley while still claiming to support the Navy leader who the Trump administration says ordered the military to take out two survivors of the initial attack.
Sitting beside President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting, Hegseth—who has denied the Washington Post and CNN's reporting that he gave a spoken directive to kill everybody on the boat before the September 2 bombing—told reporters that he left the room after the first strike, and Bradley ordered the second strike.
"I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn't stick around for the hour, and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs," Hegseth said, using Trump's preferred term for his department.
"So I moved on to my next meeting," the Fox News host-turned-Pentagon chief said. "Couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the—which he had the complete authority to do, and by the way—Adm. Bradley made the correct decision, to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat... And it was the right call. We have his back."
Asked whether he saw the survivors after that first strike, Hegseth said: "I did not personally see survivors... The thing was on fire."
"This is called the fog of war," he added. "This is what you in the press don't understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill, and you nitpick, and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about 'kill everybody' phases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all, and then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes."
On Sunday, US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said during an ABC News appearance that the second strike on September 2 was either "plain murder," or a war crime—if you accept the Trump administration's contested argument that the United States is "in armed conflict, at war... with the drug gangs," which many lawmakers and experts reject.
Responding to Hegseth's Tuesday remarks on the social media platform X, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee member said that "Secretary Talk Show Host may have been experiencing the 'fog of war,' but that doesn't change the fact that this was an extrajudicial killing amounting to murder or a war crime. One thing is clear: Pete Hegseth is unfit to serve. He must resign."
Calls for Hegseth's resignation or firing have mounted since Friday's reporting, exacerbated by his Monday X post in which the defense secretary said Bradley "has my 100% support" and "I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since."
Replying to that post, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that "making Adm. Bradley the fall guy in the administration's 'Protect Pete' campaign is disgraceful and destructive. It signals to military professionals down the ranks they'll be thrown under the bus for lawbreaking by Hegseth and other political leaders."
Despite recent bipartisan vows of "vigorous oversight" for the September 2 attack, Blumenthal said that "Republicans have shown no clear sign they'll buck the administration's blame gaming and begin a prompt investigation with subpoenas, witness depositions, hearings, and more. One immediate imperative: Demand that evidence be preserved—like all videos, emails, correspondence."
"Hegseth must go—resign or be fired," the senator added. "No question that murders or war crimes were committed on his watch. His criminal culpability may be contested, but no question that he's ultimately accountable. He directed the strikes be lethal and total. The buck stops with him."
Blumenthal is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which, alongside the relevant House panel, is set to hold a classified briefing on Thursday with testimony from Bradley. Critics in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have also called on Hegseth to testify under oath about the 22 boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific—which have killed at least 83 people—and potential US attacks within Venezuela, which the defense secretary and Trump teased again on Tuesday.
Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon special counsel who’s now a New York University law professor and Just Security co-editor-in-chief, offered some potential questions lawmakers could ask based on Hegseth and Trump's Cabinet meeting comments.
The first: "Mr. Secretary, do you hereby testify—under penalty of perjury—that all your public statements about your involvement in the September 2 strike are true? We provided you a copy of all your statements before this hearing."
Noting Trump's claim that "Pete didn't know about [the] second attack having to do with two people," Goodman suggested that lawmakers inquire: "Oh. Well then, when did Pete know about it, and what did he do about it? When he found out about it, did he know the second attack was in order to kill the shipwrecked?"
Goodman and other experts argued in a Monday analysis for Just Security that "the United States is not in an armed conflict with any drug trafficking cartel or criminal gang anywhere in the Western Hemisphere," so "the individuals involved have not committed war crimes," but "the alleged Hegseth order and special forces' lethal operation amounted to unlawful 'extrajudicial killing' under human rights law," and "the federal murder statute would also apply."
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Second US Strike on Boat Attack Survivors Was Illegal—But Experts Stress That the Rest Were, Too
"It is blatantly illegal to order criminal suspects to be murdered rather than detained," said one human rights leader.
Dec 02, 2025
As the White House claims that President Donald Trump "has the authority" to blow up anyone he dubs a "narco-terrorist" and Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley prepares for a classified congressional briefing amid outrage over a double-tap strike that kicked off the administration's boat bombing spree, rights advocates and legal experts emphasize that all of the US attacks on alleged drug-running vessels have been illegal.
"Trump said he will look into reports that the US military (illegally) conducted a follow-up strike on a boat in the Caribbean that it believed to be ferrying drugs, killing survivors of an initial missile attack. But the initial attack was illegal too," Kenneth Roth, the former longtime director of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said on social media Monday.
Roth and various others have called out the US military's bombings of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific as unlawful since they began on September 2, when the two strikes killed 11 people. The Trump administration has confirmed its attacks on 22 vessels with a death toll of at least 83 people.
Shortly after the first bombing, the Intercept reported that some passengers initially survived but were killed in a follow-up attack. Then, the Washington Post and CNN reported Friday that Bradley ordered the second strike to comply with an alleged spoken directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to kill everyone on board.
The administration has not denied that the second strike killed survivors, but Hegseth and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, have insisted that the Pentagon chief never gave the spoken order.
However, the reporting has sparked reminders that all of the bombings are "war crimes, murder, or both," as the Former Judge Advocates General (JAGs) Working Group put it on Saturday.
Following Leavitt's remarks about the September 2 strikes during a Monday press briefing, Roth stressed Tuesday that "it is not 'self-defense' to return and kill two survivors of a first attack on a supposed drug boat as they clung to the wreckage. It is murder. No amount of Trump spin will change that."
"Whether Hegseth ordered survivors killed after a US attack on a supposed drug boat is not the heart of the matter," Roth said. "It is blatantly illegal to order criminal suspects to be murdered rather than detained. There is no 'armed conflict' despite Trump's claim."
The Trump administration has argued to Congress that the strikes on boats supposedly smuggling narcotics are justified because the United States is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels that the president has labeled terrorist organizations.
During a Sunday appearance on ABC News' "This Week," US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said that "I think it's very possible there was a war crime committed. Of course, for it to be a war crime, you have to accept the Trump administration's whole construct here... which is we're in armed conflict, at war... with the drug gangs."
"Of course, they've never presented the public with the information they've got here," added Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "But it could be worse than that. If that theory is wrong, then it's plain murder."
Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the US Naval War College, rejects the Trump administration's argument that it is at war with cartels. Under international human rights law, he told the Associated Press on Monday, "you can only use lethal force in circumstances where there is an imminent threat," and with the first attack, "that wasn't the case."
"I can't imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water... That is clearly unlawful," Schmitt said. Even if the US were in an actual armed conflict, he explained, "it has been clear for well over a century that you may not declare what's called 'no quarter'—take no survivors, kill everyone."
According to the AP:
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group and a former State Department lawyer, agreed that the US is not in an armed conflict with drug cartels.
"The term for a premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder," Finucane said, adding that US military personnel could be prosecuted in American courts.
"Murder on the high seas is a crime," he said. "Conspiracy to commit murder outside of the United States is a crime. And under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 118 makes murder an offense."
Finucane also participated in a related podcast discussion released in October by Just Security, which on Monday published an analysis by three experts who examined "the law that applies to the alleged facts of the operation and Hegseth's reported order."
Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman, and Tess Bridgeman emphasized in Just Security that the law of armed conflict (LOAC) did not apply to the September 2 strikes because "the United States is not in an armed conflict with any drug trafficking cartel or criminal gang anywhere in the Western Hemisphere... For the same reason, the individuals involved have not committed war crimes."
"However, the duty to refuse clearly unlawful orders—such as an order to commit a crime—is not limited to armed conflict situations to which LOAC applies," they noted. "The alleged Hegseth order and special forces' lethal operation amounted to unlawful 'extrajudicial killing' under human rights law... The federal murder statute would also apply, whether or not there is an armed conflict."
Goodman added on social media Monday that the 11 people killed on September 2 "would be civilians even if this were an armed conflict... It's not even an armed conflict. It's extrajudicial killing."
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