Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has long distanced himself publicly from his onetime neighbor and acquaintance Jeffrey Epstein. In a podcast interview last year, he recounted a moment when Epstein, while giving Lutnick and his wife a tour of his home in 2005, made a lewd joke about owning a massage table. Lutnick said he and his wife quickly left the house and that he decided that he would “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

“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,” Lutnick told the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast last fall.

But the Justice Department’s recent release of more than 3 million documents related to the federal investigation of Epstein reveal poked holes in Lutnick’s account, showing that he maintained ties with Epstein long after 2005 — including a planned trip to the financier’s notorious private island years later.

A New York Times analysis revealed that Lutnick’s name appeared in more than 250 documents in the latest Epstein file release. According to the outlet, the documents show the two men reaching out to each other via email but also appearing on each other’s personal schedules, suggesting in-person meetings. On May 1, 2011, Lutnick was scheduled to have drinks with Epstein and seemed to have left his........

© Daily Intelligencer