House

Khanna: Trump would fire Lutnick if he heard Epstein answers

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by Sarah Davis - 05/06/26 5:52 PM ET

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by Sarah Davis - 05/06/26 5:52 PM ET

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Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) said President Trump would fire his Commerce secretary if he heard the testimony that he provided Congress on Wednesday about his relationship to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick,” Khanna told reporters following the closed-door briefing.

“It was really embarrassing,” he added. “He was asked very straightforward questions about whether he regretted misleading the American people.”

Lutnick appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday afternoon as part of the panel’s investigation into Epstein’s crimes.

The secretary admitted to visiting Epstein’s island in 2012 during testimony to senators in February, despite previously telling lawmakers that he had cut off all contact with the convicted sex offender in 2005.

He told senators he traveled to the infamous island with his wife and kids and insisted that he did not witness any alleged sex crimes that occurred on the property.

Khanna characterized Lutnick’s Wednesday testimony before the House members as “contortions and lies.”

“If you saw the exchanges that my colleagues had with him, you would see he made a farce of the English language,” the lawmaker said.

Khanna led the bipartisan push with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which compelled the Justice Department to release all of the files it had related to its investigation into Epstein’s crimes. The president signed the bill into law last November.

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) echoed Khanna’s synopsis of Lutnick’s testimony, calling on the Trump official to “resign.”

“That was absolutely mind-boggling what we just heard in the room,” Subramanyam said. “He was evasive, nervous. He was dishonest. He would not admit to lying, which he clearly did.”

Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) refuted Democrats’ statements to the press about the briefing.

“I hope that when you get the transcripts, you fact-check them on what they say,” Comer told the media. “This is a habit of the Democrats on this committee, coming out and telling you all stuff that was said that was not said.”

The chair specifically criticized Khanna’s characterization of Lutnick’s testimony.

“The mistakes that Ro Khanna’s made and come out and delivered to you all, I can’t keep up with,” Comer told reporters outside the briefing room.

Before the briefing began Wednesday afternoon, Comer acknowledged that Lutnick had previously not been “100 percent truthful” about whether he had visited Epstein’s island.

“At the end of the day, I haven’t seen wrongdoing in the email correspondence, but he wasn’t 100 percent truthful with whether or not he had been on the island,” Comer said before the testimony.

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