Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared to contradict FBI Director Kash Patel’s declare that Jeffrey Epstein by no means trafficked his victims to different individuals whereas speaking about his private expertise with the disgraced financier and intercourse offender again after they had been neighbors in New York Metropolis.
Recounting a skeevy interplay he had with Epstein throughout an look on Wednesday’s episode of the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, Lutnick stated he suspects Epstein was not solely forcing younger girls and women into intercourse acts with individuals he knew however was additionally blackmailing these high-profile associates and associates with incriminating footage of the interactions.
Whereas touring Epstein’s Manhattan house together with his spouse, Lutnick remembered being baffled by why any residence would want a devoted “therapeutic massage room.”
Chip Somodevilla by way of Getty Pictures
“I say to him, ‘Therapeutic massage desk in the course of your own home? How typically do you might have a therapeutic massage?’” Lutnick recalled. “And he says, ‘Daily.’ After which he will get, like, weirdly near me, and he says, ‘And the proper of therapeutic massage.’”
Lutnick claimed to consider that Epstein’s “therapeutic massage room” was a part of his scheme to extort wealthy and influential associates who “participated” in his abuse.
“They get a therapeutic massage, that’s what his M.O. was. ‘Get a therapeutic massage, get a therapeutic massage,’ and what occurred in that therapeutic massage room, I assume, was on video,” he theorized. “This man was the best blackmailer ever. That’s how he had cash.”
Lutnick’s speculation appeared to undermine claims Patel made throughout a tense Senate Judiciary Committee listening to final month, the place on Sept. 16, he said his agency had “no credible information” to recommend Epstein trafficked women to associates or associates.
“If there have been,” Patel added on the time, “I might carry the case yesterday that he trafficked to different people.”
