Jennifer Bowers BahneyMay 7th, 2026, 12:11 pm

The View’s Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served in the first Trump administration, predicted Thursday that Howard Lutnick’s days as President Donald Trump’s commerce secretary are numbered.

Lutnick testified in a closed door session before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The committee asked about statements Lutnick made on a podcast about deciding to have nothing more to do with Epstein — before it was discovered that he later took his family to Epstein’s island and continued to do business with him.

In a press conference, Democrats accused Lutnick of being “evasive” and “dishonest,” and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) called Lutnick’s performance “embarrassing.”

“There feels like there’s uneven treatment,” Griffin said. “You had the Clintons testify. It was under oath on camera. We have seen footage…And that was under subpoena, so that’s the distinction they’re making. But I think for the public trust in the fact that this is actually a nonpartisan investigation, it would have been helpful to have him in his own words on camera answering these questions.”

Griffin continued:

I do suspect that Howard Lutnick’s days in the Trump cabinet may be numbered, because the news cycle has largely moved on from Epstein. We’re talking about the war in Iran, we’re talking about high gas prices. It’s kind of been on the back burner for a bit. People have not forgotten about it, but it’s not in the headlines. Then he shows up to testify and it’s front and center again. That is something that the president does not want to see and I could see a world in which he says, you know, “Politely move on.’ Maybe he’s not formally fired but that they would want him to move on to something else to just kind of get the stink away from the White House.

Co-host Sara Haines recounted the interview in which Lutnick claimed he and his wife decided to avoid Epstein, marveling that the public later found out “you took your children to a pedophile island, then you continued business.”

“The problem around the entire Epstein file there’s little trickles of bread crumbs which, when they say, ‘There’s nothing here, you gotta forget it bout it’ — then stop lying about it over and over and over again!” continued Haines.

Watch the clip above via The View on ABC.

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