The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, will appear before the House oversight and reform committee on Wednesday to answer questions over his past ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Lutnick agreed in March to sit for a transcribed interview with the committee following the justice department’s release of millions of documents related to Epstein, which included documents showing that Lutnick continued correspondence with Epstein after the disgraced financier had been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. The session is part of the committee’s broader investigation into Epstein.

“The secretary looks forward to addressing any questions on the record when he testifies voluntarily before the oversight committee,” a commerce department spokesperson said. “He looks forward to putting to rest the inaccurate and baseless claims in the media designed to distract from his historic work underway at the commerce department.”

The interview on Wednesday will take place behind closed doors, with a transcript released at a later date, as the committee has done with the previous transcribed interviews.

In January, documents released by the justice department as part of the tranche of files related to Epstein revealed that Lutnick, who was once Epstein’s neighbor in Manhattan, maintained contact with the disgraced financier after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The revelation contradicted a previous claim Lutnick made last year that he and his wife had cut ties with Epstein in 2005.

During a Senate hearing in February, Lutnick, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, acknowledged that he visited Epstein’s private island in 2012, telling lawmakers that he and his family traveled to the island for a lunch with Epstein.

“My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” Lutnick said. “I had another couple with – they were there as well, with their children.

“And we had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour,” he said.

Among the documents released in the files is also Epstein’s schedule for 1 May 2011, which shows a scheduled appointment with Lutnick.

During the hearing, Lutnick told lawmakers: “I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters in February that Lutnick “remains a very important member” of the president’s team, and said that the president “fully supports” Lutnick.

In a statement earlier this year, a commerce department representative said Lutnick and his wife “met Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 and had very limited interactions with him over the next 14 years”.

The spokesperson added that “this is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments, including securing trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker”.

The records and the testimony in February contradicted a previous statement Lutnick made last year on a podcast, where he described a 2005 visit to Epstein’s Manhattan home that he said led him and his wife to decide to never be in a room with Epstein again.

Lutnick said on the podcast that Epstein had given a tour of his house to Lutnick and his wife, and that there was a massage table and candles in the middle of one of the rooms.

“I say to him: ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often you have a massage?’” Lutnick said. “And he says: ‘Every day.’ And then he like gets, like, weirdly close to me and he says: ‘And the right kind of massage.’”

“Now, my wife is standing here, so she looks at me and I look at her and we say: ‘I’m sorry, we have to go,’” Lutnick continued. “And we left, and in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, ’cause he’s gross.”

Since the release of the Epstein files, Lutnick has faced calls from some lawmakers to resign over his former ties to Epstein. Thomas Massie, a Republican who co-authored the law mandating the release of the Epstein files, said that Lutnick has a “lot to answer for” and said that he should “just resign”.