MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick once said he cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein before Epstein was ever charged with sex crimes. But after Lutnick's name appeared in the latest release of Epstein files, he admitted in a congressional hearing that that was not true. In that Tuesday hearing, Lutnick defended a trip he took to Epstein's island years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex offenses and served time in jail.
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HOWARD LUTNICK: 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 all together. We were on family vacation.
MARTIN: We turn to NPR's Stephen Fowler, who's been tracking this and other developments. Good morning, Stephen.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what more do we know about Lutnick's relationship with Epstein?
FOWLER: Well, it's important to remember, Lutnick was neighbors with Epstein in New York, but he said on a podcast last year that he did not associate with Jeffrey Epstein starting in 2005, after getting a tour of his house and seeing stuff like a massage table in a room that just gave him a bad feeling. The exact language was that he decided, quote, "I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again," he recalled. Well, when the 3 million pages of Epstein files were released, Lutnick's communications with Jeffrey Epstein were there, and when Lutnick was in front of a Senate committee dealing with broadband, he instead had to answer broadly for the conflicting information about this relationship.
MARTIN: So as for how President Trump is viewing Lutnick's presence in the files, this is White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She said this on Tuesday.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT: Secretary Lutnick remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the secretary.
MARTIN: And, you know, the president also appears in the documents, but there are also these new reports that Trump told police about Epstein in 2006. What can you tell us about that?
FOWLER: Well, there's this document called a 302 with notes from an interview in 2019 with someone who was the chief of Palm Beach Police back in 2006 when Epstein was first investigated. That officer's recollection is that Trump called to say things like, thank goodness you're stopping him. Everyone known he's been doing this and that Trump said Ghislaine Maxwell was, quote, "evil." But this really reiterates a major problem with trying to build a complete, objective and accurate understanding of what these files really say.
MARTIN: In what way?
FOWLER: Well, Michel, on one hand, this document was put together in 2020 about an interview in 2019 after Epstein died by suicide in prison about a conversation that happened more than a dozen years earlier and that there is no corroborating evidence for. But if you take it at face value for a second, it would mean that Trump has not been telling the truth when he says he never knew anything about the crimes Epstein and Maxwell committed. And there's no way to know because there's 3 million files that we have in no sort of order or context with various levels of redaction, and there's another 3-million-plus kept hidden.
MARTIN: There's 3 million pages more?
FOWLER: That the Justice Department says it's not releasing.
MARTIN: Wow. OK. Well, going back to the question of the redactions, the Justice Department continues to unredact names and information it was supposed to have revealed from the start. Why is that, and will we see more of that?
FOWLER: This week, lawmakers have been going in to see unredacted versions of the documents. They've come out with a near-universal agreement that the Justice Department and FBI is keeping things from the public that shouldn't be, especially when you consider the Epstein files Transparency Act. As one example, Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna mentioned things that they saw, hinted at names. The Justice Department moved to unmask those names. And as more of us, including NPR, continue to methodically plow through these files, there's going to be more dots connected and more consequences like we're seeing both here and abroad.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Stephen Fowler. Stephen, thank you.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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