Trump official bought business with Epstein years after claiming to cut ties: report

Before he joined President Donald Trump's Cabinet, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick jointly owned a business with convicted child predator Jeffrey Epstein.

CBS News reported Friday on new revelations contained in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) latest release of documents from Epstein's two federal investigations showing Lutnick and Epstein acquiring a company in 2012. One document shows both Lutnick's and Epstein's signatures on a document purchasing stakes in the now-defunct digital advertising company Adfin. Epstein signed on behalf of his entity, Southern Trust Company, while Lutnick signed on behalf of a limited liability company named CVAFH I.

The purchase took place just four days after Lutnick and his wife, Allison, visited Epstein's Little Saint James Island around the Christmas holiday of 2012. Lutnick initiated contact with the convicted sex trafficker, emailing him to inform him that he and his wife would be in the Caribbean, and if they could meet for lunch. Allison Lutnick told Epstein's assistant that the couple would be arriving on a 188-foot yacht named "Excellence."

CBS noted that the island visit and business deal came multiple years after Lutnick claimed to have cut off all contact with Epstein. In October, Lutnick told the New York Post's Miranda Devine that he and his wife were both disgusted by Epstein after he invited them to his home in 2005. Lutnick referred to Epstein as "the greatest blackmailer ever."

During the 2005 visit, Lutnick — who at the time ran the firm Cantor Fitzgerald and lived next door to Epstein — said Epstein showed off the "massage room" in his Manhattan town house.

"“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?'” Lutnick said. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.'”

"In the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again," he added.

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