Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick seemed to contradict FBI Director Kash Patel’s claim that Jeffrey Epstein never trafficked his victims to other people while talking about his personal experience with the disgraced financier and sex offender back when they were neighbors in New York City.Recounting a skeevy interaction he had with Epstein during an appearance on Wednesday’s episode of the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, Lutnick said he suspects Epstein was not only forcing young women and girls into sex acts with people he knew but was also blackmailing those high-profile friends and associates with incriminating footage of the interactions.While touring Epstein’s Manhattan apartment with his wife, Lutnick remembered being baffled by why any residence would need a dedicated “massage room.”FBI Director Kash Patel is pictured during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 16. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared to undermine one of Patel's core claims about Jeffrey Epstein during a recent podcast appearance.Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’” Lutnick recalled. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like, weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.’”Lutnick claimed to believe that Epstein’s “massage room” was part of his scheme to extort rich and influential friends who “participated” in his abuse.“They get a massage, that’s what his M.O. was. ‘Get a massage, get a massage,’ and what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video,” he theorized. “This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever. That’s how he had money.”Lutnick’s hypothesis seemed to undermine claims Patel made during a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, where on Sept. 16, he said his agency had “no credible information” to suggest Epstein trafficked girls to friends or associates.“If there were,” Patel added at the time, “I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals.”Close