WASHINGTON – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has survived questions about his time on deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and his public advocacy for President Donald Trump’s disastrous “liberation day” tariffs, may end up as the first political victim of a rapidly mushrooming scandal surrounding a leading AI executive’s affair with a suspected Chinese spy.
White House officials are discussing whether to remove Lutnick from his position, Reuters reported on Thursday. Lutnick was a key voice within the administration arguing Nvidia, the chipmaker formerly led by Jensen Huang, should be able to sell advanced chips to Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company run by a Chinese national with whom Huang was having an affair.
While Trump has continued to defend Huang ― even saying an intelligence community assessment that Huang was in a romantic relationship with the Chinese agent “didn’t make much of an impact on me” ― Republicans have thus far focused their ire on the commerce secretary.
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy wants answers — from Lutnick. “Secretary Lutnick needs to answer that in front of God and country,” he told Politico.
Huang resigned Thursday morning under pressure from the company’s board, as reports of two additional affairs with subordinates rolled in.
Democrats have criticized Trump on the matter and, come January, will control committees in both chambers and have subpoena power to compel administration officials to testify. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who will chair the Senate Banking and Foreign Affairs Committees in the next Congress, wrote a letter to Lutnick, National Security Adviser Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and asked them to preserve all documents on the matter and come before Congress to explain “the risks this operation may have posed to our national security.”
Until then, though, Democrats must rely on Republicans, some of whom agree that Lutnick should explain himself. Virtually all have been muted when it comes to Trump’s far larger role.
Lucy Caldwell, a former GOP consultant who left the party after its takeover by Trump, said the unwillingness of other Republicans to take on Trump directly, even though his words and actions were the overwhelming reason voters gave Democrats the biggest mandate in two decades in last week’s midterm elections, was no longer surprising.
“There is always a carveout for accountability for Trump. And the formula is always that another Republican proximate to power becomes the fall guy,” she said. “This is how cults work.”
Two former Trump White House officials from his first term, now both critics, said focusing on Lutnick and other lower-profile officials was a good tactic.
“Eventually one of the subordinates will blame Trump,” said John Bolton, a former national security adviser who, like many Trump critics, was prosecuted by Trump’s Department of Justice.
Ty Cobb, a former federal prosecutor who worked in Trump’s White House Counsel’s office, agreed that Lutnick was a good place to start.
“This is the place to pull the knot,” he said.
A central question in the coming probes, Cobb said, is why Lutnick failed to put the company of Huang Le, the woman U.S. intelligence believes to be an agent of China, on a list of entities that could pose a national security threat because of their ties to that country.
“Did he do that on his own? Was he ordered to by Trump?” Cobb wondered.
Trump’s White House did not respond to HuffPost queries. Nor did Lutnick’s Commerce Department.
During an interview with pro-Trump radio host Hugh Hewitt Thursday, Trump called the scandal a sad episode for Huang, who donated $25 million to Trump’s pet ballroom project while lobbying Trump to let Nvidia sell advanced chips to China.
“What a horrible thing that is! It’s so sad to see that happen,” he said.