For months, President Donald Trump has pleaded with his supporters to move on from the Jeffrey Epstein controversy − calling it a "Democratic hoax” − even as he faces growing calls from Congress and many in his own MAGA base for more disclosure on the jet-setting sex offender. But Trump's fellow billionaire and Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, apparently didn't get the memo. Lutnick held forth on a recent podcast about how he found Epstein, who was a close friend of Trump's for more than a decade, to be “gross" and believed he was a "blackmailer." “He was gross,” said Lutnick, in a Oct.1 podcast interview with New York Post’s Miranda Devine. Lutnick described Epstein as the "greatest blackmailer ever" and suggested he had used compromising videos of prominent men to get a 2008 sweetheart deal in Florida amid a child prostitution investigation. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/04/jeffrey-esptein-trump-howard-lutnick-blackmailer/86486353007/