Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) predicted President Donald Trump would have fired Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick if he had seen how poorly he performed during his deposition on Jeffrey Epstein.
Following Lutnick's testimony on Wednesday, Khanna noted that Republicans had blocked attempts to video record the deposition.
"Well, now we know why that interview was not videotaped," the lawmaker told reporters. "If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick. It was really embarrassing."
According to Khanna, the Commerce secretary did not give satisfactory answers about why he had misled the public by claiming he never met with Epstein after he was convicted as a sex offender. In fact, Lutnick had taken his family to visit Epstein on his island, where sexual assaults were alleged to have taken place.
"It was just contortions and lies and no acknowledgment that he misled the American public," Khanna recalled. "And if you saw the exchanges that my colleagues had with him, you would see he made a farce of the English language. I mean, he was trying to define 'I' as if saying that what he really meant is that he would not see Epstein alone, but we'd be totally fine with having his wife and kids see Epstein. It made no sense."
"And then he's raised even more serious concerns about the investigation," he continued. "He originally had said that Epstein engaged in blackmail and recorded videotapes. Now he's saying, well, he was wrong. He was just speculating, and Epstein actually didn't engage in blackmailing. This raises the question of what the cover-up is."
"Why is Howard Lutnick changing his testimony, changing his story. He's lost all credibility, and really, it's a shame that the American people don't get to see what he did there. Total lack of truth and lack of honesty."