Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick donated $5 million to a group that supports electing House Republicans just weeks before he was set to sit down with lawmakers and be interviewed about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

The New York Times uncovered the donation on Friday, stating that it was made on April 1, four weeks after the House Oversight Committee booked Lutnick for an interview. 

That closed-door session took place on May 6, with House Oversight Democrats continuing to call for Lutnick's resignation, claiming questions remain about why Lutnick said he cut ties with Epstein years before he actually did. 

Lutnick's donation was to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC working to retain the Republicans' majority in the House of Representatives. 

This was Lutnick's first political donation since serving in President Donald Trump's Cabinet. 

It tied with his largest-ever federal donation, which was $5 million toward Trump's super PAC during the 2024 campaign, the Times said. 

'Mr. Lutnick made a political donation in his personal capacity, just as many Cabinet Secretaries from both parties have done in the past,' Commerce Department spokesperson Kristen Eichamer told the paper. 

The Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail's request for additional comment. 

If Democrats win back the House of Representatives they gain subpoena power and can dig further into Epstein.  

The donation revelation comes at a politically perilous time for Lutnick. 

While no Epstein victims have ever accused Lutnick of wrongdoing, new Daily Mail/JL Partners polling shows that nearly half of the registered voters surveyed, 49 percent, believed Lutnick should resign. 

Even among GOP-registered voters, support for him staying in the job was hardly overwhelming: only 40 percent said he should keep his job, while 30 percent said he should go. 

Lutnick is in political hot water because he said he had cut off ties with the disgraced financier in 2005, though the Department of Justice document release revealed that he had visited Epstein's Caribbean island in 2012. 

He told lawmakers that he and his wife were invited to Epstein's New York home in 2005 but left shortly after being shown his massage table and a comment made about the kinds of massages he enjoyed.

The episode, Lutnick said, was so 'off-putting' that he told his wife he no longer wanted to socialize with Epstein.

Epstein was later convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor.

In 2011, Lutnick briefly met Epstein, who wished to alert the CEO about scaffolding going up around his property.

He labeled that neighbor-to-neighbor meeting and a subsequent encounter in 2012 as 'meaningless and inconsequential.'

While vacationing in the Caribbean with his family that year, Lutnick recounted how he was contacted by Epstein's staff, who knew he was staying nearby and extended an invitation for lunch on the now-notorious private island of Little Saint James.

The Trump official said he took along his wife, children, another couple and their children, as well as staff.

'We sat outside, had lunch. It was boring. We left,' he told the committee.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are continuing to call for Lutnick's resignation, arguing that his testimony to the panel did not clear up why he claimed to have cut ties with Epstein years before he actually did.

'Given your opportunity to come clean, you instead offered implausible distinctions and semantic games,' Ranking Member, Representative Robert Garcia, wrote in a letter last week.

Lutnick argued the claim that he stopped seeing Epstein after 2005 was 'not misleading' because the 2012 island excursion took place with his wife.

'I, Howard Lutnick, one person, was never in a situation,' the Commerce Secretary said. 'I'm saying I wouldn't go and put myself in a situation where I was unaccompanied with him because he's disgusting.'