White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday abruptly cut short a briefing with reporters after a reporter asked about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The question came hours after Lutnick, responding to questions from congressional lawmakers over documents released by the Justice Department, revealed that he misled the public about the extent of his ties to the convicted pedophile sex trafficker, who killed himself in jail while awaiting trial.
Leavitt was roughly 20 minutes into one of her regular briefings with the White House press corps when a reporter asked whether President Donald Trump would stand behind Lutnick, who earlier in the day had admitted to members of the Senate Commerce Committee that he’d visited Epstein’s notorious private island, Little Saint James.
She replied that Trump “fully supports” Lutnick and described him as “a very important member of President Trump’s team.”
But instead of allowing reporters to probe further into Trump’s views on Lutnick, or ask any other further questions, Leavitt launched into a monologue chastising reporters for not asking about various positive statistics touted by the administration on issues of importance to the president.
“I will just point out that there are a lot of wins in the news this week that people in this room have not asked about — you continue to ask questions about the same subject — so let me point them out for you again,” she said.
Leavitt then started rattling off a list of days-old topics, including stock market results from this past Friday, a medical group announcing opposition to performing gender transition surgery on minors, or recent reductions in the national crime rate.
“So we’re going to get back to business. The president is very busy tonight, and you’ll see him all tomorrow at the event in the East Room touting his administration’s energy policy,” she said.
She then turned and walked out of the room with a group of aides in tow.
Leavitt also answered a question about another document released by the administration which relayed a secondhand report alleging that Trump had spoken to a Palm Beach, Florida police chief about Epstein and claimed that “everyone” knew about the pedophile’s illegal activities with minors.
Although she would not confirm whether the alleged 2006 phone call actually happened, she claimed Trump has always been “honest and transparent” about his relationship with Epstein, who was once among one of his closest friends before the two men had a falling-out in the early 2000s.
Lutnick, a longtime friend of the president who had pushed to become Treasury Secretary after serving as the finance chief for Trump’s 2024 campaign, has not been similarly “honest and transparent” about his ties to the dead rapist.
While he had told the New York Post in October that he’d cut off contact with Epstein — his onetime next door neighbor — 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,” documents released by the Justice Department showed that Lutnick not only maintained ties with Epstein as late as 2018 — the year before he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges and long after he’d spent time in jail for state-level offenses related to his preying on young girls — but even arranged a visit to Epstein’s so-called “rape island” in 2012.
The commerce secretary admitted to visiting the infamous landmass, which is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on Tuesday under 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 said.
“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 also claimed in his testimony that he “did not have any relationship with” Epstein and “barely had anything to do with that person.”
