Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s testimony before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday confirmed that he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012, contradicting his long-held claims that he cut off contact with the disgraced financier more than two decades ago.

Under questioning from senators examining recently released Justice Department documents, Lutnick acknowledged that he and his family had lunch with Epstein on Little Saint James during a vacation.

“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick said. “My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with their children, and we had lunch on the island. That is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife, all together.”

>100 SECRET PHOTOS FROM JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S FILES – SLIDESHOW

Lutnick’s admission undercuts earlier statements in which he asserted that he had minimized contact with Epstein after meeting him when they lived next door in New York. In Senate testimony, Lutnick said that he met Epstein “three times over 14 years” and that he “did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person, okay?”

The newly released Justice Department files include emails and correspondence suggesting more interaction between the two men than Lutnick had previously acknowledged, prompting challenges from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), the panel’s ranking Democrat, pressed Lutnick on discrepancies between his past public statements and the records. “You led people to believe that you had cut off all contact with Jeffrey Epstein after the 2005 encounter… The Epstein files show a very different record of interaction,” Van Hollen said.

Lutnick responded by outlining the limited number of interactions he recalls and stressed that the lunch did not involve any impropriety. When asked if he saw anything inappropriate during the island visit, he said, “The only thing I saw, with my wife and my children and the other couple and their children, was staff who worked for Mr. Epstein on that island.”

The 2012 lunch occurred four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor, an offense that resulted in a controversial plea deal and required him to register as a sex offender. Documents also show correspondence between Lutnick and Epstein that postdates that conviction, further complicating the narrative that Lutnick had little to do with Epstein after 2005.

Lutnick’s testimony has sparked bipartisan concern about transparency and judgment. Some lawmakers argue that the secretary’s earlier characterization of his relationship with Epstein may have misled both Congress and the public. “There’s not an indication that you yourself engaged in any wrongdoing… It’s the fact that you misled the country and the Congress,” Van Hollen told Lutnick.