Rep. Nancy Mace on Friday said that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick should testify to the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about his association with notorious sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“Howard Lutnick should take questions from the Oversight committee,” Mace, R-S.C., said in an X post on Friday morning.

Mace’s tweet responded to an X post that said the Department of Justice had removed from its database of Epstein-related documents a photo of Epstein standing in front of a man who “appears to be Howard Lutnick.”

It is not known when the photo, which since has been restored to the DOJ’s public database, was taken.

But it appears to include, in addition to Epstein, Lutnick and his friend Michael Lehrman, who other documents in the DOJ’s database indicated was vacationing with Lutnick and his family when they all visited Epstein for lunch on his private island in December 2012.

Lutnick has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

Mace later Friday morning told reporters, “I will be asking” Lutnick to testify to the Oversight committee.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., separately told reporters that he believed there would be enough votes on the committee to subpoena Lutnick to testify.

The lawmakers’ comments came before that panel was set to question former President Bill Clinton in a deposition about his connections to Epstein in Chappaqua, New York.

Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was deposed about Epstein on Thursday. She told reporters later that she testified she did not recall ever meeting Epstein, and that she had no knowledge of his crimes.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Thursday told reporters that it is “very possible” that the panel will subpoena Lutnick to testify.

Comer has not called President Donald Trump to testify.

Trump, who had a longtime friendship with Epstein before the two men fell out in the early 2000s, has said that the recently released files on Epstein by the DOJ exonerate him of any wrongdoing.

MS Now reported earlier this week that the DOJ withheld from public disclosure memos and notes about FBI interviews, including those of a woman who has alleged that Trump sexually abused her when she was a minor.

The DOJ, in response to that and other similar…

Trump administration Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday admitted he and his family had lunch on the private island of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein years earlier.

“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation” in 2012, Lutnick said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” he 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.

“And we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife, all together. We were on family vacation,” he said.

The secretary’s admission came as he faces bipartisan calls to resign following the release of records showing that his business and personal relationship with Epstein was more extensive than previously known.

Lutnick previously said that he cut off contact with Epstein after 2005 — years before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a state-level charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution, which required him to register as a sex offender.

But analyses of the latest batch of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice show Lutnick and Epstein were in communication years later.

In December 2012, Epstein invited Lutnick to lunch at his private island in the Caribbean for lunch, the documents showed. The two men also had business dealings as recently as 2014, CBS News reported.

In his testimony Tuesday morning, Lutnick insisted that he “barely had anything to do with that person.”

“I’m glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved, when I moved to a house next door to him in New York,” the Cabinet secretary testified.

“Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times,” he said. “So six years later, I met him, and then a year and a half after that, I met him, and never again.”

“Probably the total — and you’ve seen all of these documents, of these millions and millions of documents — there may be 10 emails connecting me with him … Over a 14 year period.”

“I did not have any relationship with him,” Lutnick said.

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Republican Rep. Thomas Massie called on Howard Lutnick to resign amid revelations that the Commerce secretary had more extensive business and personal dealings with deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein than previously disclosed.

Massie’s remarks come after The New York Times reported Sunday that Lutnick interacted “regularly” with Epstein, according to files released by the Department of Justice relating to the notorious sex offender. Massie, R-Ky., was the lead Republican on the Epstein Files Transparency Act that compelled the release of the Epstein files.

“He should just resign,” Massie said on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.”

“Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

Massie noted that several British officials have been toppled over appearances in the Epstein files. Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, resigned on Sunday over his role in appointing ousted U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson. Mandelson was also named in the Epstein files.

Lutnick’s dealings with Epstein have come under increased scrutiny as dozens of public figures have been named in the files, which the DOJ has been releasing after a law was signed compelling their disclosure. The former chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald said on the podcast “Pod Force One” last year that he swore off interactions with Epstein after an initial encounter in 2005.

The Times’ analysis of the Epstein files, however, found that Lutnick and Epstein were in touch for years after the first meeting in 2005. It was previously reported that Epstein had invited Lutnick to his private island in the Caribbean, and that Lutnick had been communicating with Epstein about construction happening across the street from their homes. The two also had drinks in 2011, the files revealed.

The Times report also includes new details, including that Epstein’s lawyer obtained the resume of Lutnick’s nanny and that Epstein donated $50,000 to an event honoring Lutnick.

Epstein and Lutnick also invested in the now-defunct company AdFin Solutions, according to the Times report.

A Commerce Department spokesperson told the Times that Lutnick had “very limited interactions” with Epstein, and called the report a “failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments.”

CNBC has reached out to the Commerce Department and the White House for a response to Massie’s comments.

USA Rare Earth shares rallied on Monday after the critical minerals startup announced that the Department of Commerce will take an equity stake.

Commerce has issued a letter of intent that would provide USA Rare Earth with a $1.3 billion loan and $277 million in federal funding.

USA Rare Earth will issue Commerce 16.1 million shares of common stock and 17.6 million in warrants. Its stock soared more than 20% in premarket trading after the announcement Monday.

The deal is subject to finalization of agreements and approvals. USA Rare Earth also raised $1.5 billion from private investors.

The capital infusion from the Trump administration will help USA Rare Earth advance its plan to build a magnet manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and a mine at a rare earth deposit in Texas called Round Top.

The Trump administration is building a Western rare earth and critical minerals supply chain as it seeks to reduce dependence on China.

“USA Rare Earth’s heavy critical minerals project is essential to restoring U.S. critical mineral independence,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a statement. “This investment ensures our supply chains are resilient and no longer reliant on foreign nations.”

The Trump administration struck a landmark deal last year with rare earth miner MP Materials that included an equity stake, price floor and offtake agreement. It also took stakes in Lithium Americas and Trilogy Metals.

Rare earths are a subset of critical minerals that are crucial inputs in strategic industries like defense, robotics, electric vehicles and semiconductor manufacturing.

The U.S. has been dependent on rare earth imports from China, which dominates the global supply chain. Beijing tried to cut off rare earth exports last year during trade disputes with the Trump administration.

As retailers increasingly turn to artificial intelligence tools to lure shoppers and run key parts of their business, Google wants to make sure it’s in the center of the action.

At the kickoff of the National Retail Federation’s annual show on Sunday, Google announced the launch of what it’s calling the Universal Commerce Protocol. The company wants UCP to become an industry standard that retailers use for their AI agents and systems across tasks like discovery, buying and “post-purchase-support.”

Google says the open-source protocol creates a unified system spanning the shopping experience, from searching to payment, so that retailers don’t have to build their own tools and connect the various functions.

“It’s very important to have a standardized way so we can scale these things and everyone can be prepared for all the various steps to happen,” Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president of Google ads and commerce, said in an interview. “Businesses can pick and choose what they want so there’s flexibility for them.”

E-commerce has emerged as one of the major battlegrounds in the booming generative AI market, with Google facing off against OpenAI, Perplexity and Amazon, as they all try and get consumers to use their various apps and services to begin their shopping journey.

In September, OpenAI announced Instant Checkout, which allows users to buy some products through ChatGPT, taking a fee from transactions it helps orchestrate. OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol developed in partnership with Stripe, is open source and could compete with UCP.

Perplexity in May said it’s partnering with PayPal to let users buy products, book travel and secure concert tickets directly in its chat without leaving the platform, and in November said it will roll out a free agentic shopping product for U.S. users ahead of the holiday season.

And earlier last year, Amazon launched “Shop Direct,” a feature that lets consumers browse items from other brands’ sites on Amazon. Some of those items include a button labeled “Buy for Me,” an AI agent that can purchase products from other websites on a shopper’s behalf.

By 2030, the retail market could represent a $3 trillion to $5 trillion opportunity globally due to AI-powered tools and agentic commerce, according to a report in October from McKinsey.

Google said UCP was co-developed with companies including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair and Target. The protocol will soon power a new checkout feature allowing users to buy direct from Google’s AI Mode or Gemini App. They can pay via Google Wallet, but Srinivasan said the company plans to include other payment methods like PayPal in the future. 

Srinivasan said UCP will be compatible with other existing protocols.

As part of Sunday’s announcements, Google also introduced a feature called Business Agent, allowing shoppers to chat with brands.

“This is to address…

Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, according to a public notice issued by the company on Sunday.

The company plans to raise 110 billion rupees ($1.22 billion) of fresh capital. Zepto was valued at $7 billion during its last funding round in October, data from research firm Tracxn showed.

Zepto told CNBC it filed its draft prospectus under the confidential route, which keeps its filings private, and declined to disclose further details.

While e-commerce giant Amazon has long offered same-day delivery services in India through “Amazon Fresh”, the launch of its 15-minute “Amazon Now” service in June marked an aggressive shift into a crowded space.

The Jeff Bezos-owned U.S. company has started its quick commerce operations across Indian’s three major cities—Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.

Amazon India’s Country Manager Samir Kumar said on Dec. 1, that it plans to have well over 300 micro-fulfillment centers across Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai by the end of the year.

“India’s quick commerce market is currently 10% of its e-commerce market, but in the medium to long term it could account for 40%-50%,” Karan Taurani, executive vice president at Indian broking firm Elara Capital, told CNBC’s Inside India last week.

Walmart-owned Flipkart also launched its quick commerce service in 2024. Indian food delivery companies, Swiggy and Eternal, which owns Zomato and Blinkit, were among the first movers in this space.

Over the last three to five years, several companies have entered the quick commerce market in India and are ” indulging in a price war” as firms chase a large total addressable market, Taurani said.

The sector has continued to attract large sums of capital. Earlier this month, Swiggy raised 100 billion rupees from institutional investors to expand its quick commerce fulfilment network, including warehouses located closer to dense neighborhoods.

But some industry leaders have warned that the pace of spending may not be sustainable.

Blinkit Chief Executive Albinder Dhindsa has reportedly warned of a bubble bursting.

He told Bloomberg that the quick commerce industry has relied heavily on “relentless fundraising” to cover steep losses and that companies would soon face limits on how long they can continue absorbing them.

Zepto’s losses reportedly widened in fiscal year 2025 to 33.67 billion rupees from 12.15 billion rupees a year ago.

Data from LSEG showed that Swiggy reported a net loss of 31.17 billion rupees in FY25, up from 23.50 billion rupees the year before, while Eternal reported net income of…