Everyone knows what Epstein does – Mehr news agency RCO News Agency

According to the Mehr News Agency, citing the base of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce of the Trump Administration, faced a lot of questions about his relationship with the late investor in a meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday.

The developments show that the fallout from the Epstein scandal is still a major political challenge for the Trump administration, especially after the Justice Department released millions of files related to Epstein weeks ago under legislation proposed by both Republican and Democratic parties.

The documents created a crisis outside the United States, and new details of Epstein’s relationships with prominent political, financial, business and academic figures were revealed. According to a summary of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s interview with Michael Reiter, the police chief of Palm Beach, Florida, who was among the documents, Trump called him in July 2006; When the first sex allegations against Epstein were made public.

“Thank God you caught him,” Reuters quoted Trump as saying. Everyone knows what he does.”

The document states that Trump told Reuters that the people of New York knew about Epstein’s work and that Epstein’s partner, Glenn Maxwell, was an “evil” person.

In response to the question about this conversation, the US Department of Justice announced that “we do not have any evidence that the president contacted the legislative authorities 20 years ago.”

Trump was a friend of Epstein for many years, but he himself said that he broke up with Epstein before his first arrest and has repeatedly stated that he was not aware of his crimes.

White House spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt told reporters on Tuesday that Trump had been “honest and transparent” about the end of his relationship with Epstein, adding about the 2006 phone conversation: “It may or may not have happened. I don’t have an answer to this question.”

Epstein was found in a New York jail in 2019 and while awaiting trial, his death was officially ruled a suicide, but it sparked conspiracy theories that persisted for years, including some that Trump had floated among his supporters during his 2024 campaign.