Another one. That’s the first thing that crossed my mind, and I’d bet the farm it crossed yours too.
Simon Andriesz, a British banker who spent years telling anyone who’d listen, including the FBI, about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s business dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, died by suicide last week at 57. The news was confirmed by Andy Agathangelou of the Transparency Task Force, a man who knew Andriesz and called him “a valued member of our community.” Andriesz had been a managing director at BGC Group back when Lutnick ran the place. He wasn’t some fringe crank typing from a basement. He was inside the building.
Now, I want to be careful here, because I’m a church-going woman and I don’t traffic in murder mysteries. The official word is suicide, and I’ll take the official word until the facts say otherwise. But bless my soul, am I the only one who’s noticed the pattern? Epstein himself died in a federal cell with cameras conveniently on the fritz and guards skipping their rounds, and the Justice Department’s July memo says move along, folks, nothing to see, no client list exists. Virginia Giuffre, the bravest voice that whole rotten circus ever produced, gone by her own hand in April. And now the banker who carried the story about a sitting Cabinet secretary to the FBI.
Here’s what Andriesz was blowing the whistle on, and this part isn’t speculation. In February, Howard Lutnick sat before the Senate Appropriations Committee and admitted, out loud, that he’d had lunch with Jeffrey Epstein and visited his island in 2012. This after years of insisting he’d cut ties with the man long before. So the whistleblower was right, the secretary’s earlier story wasn’t, and the Senate’s response was, what, a stern frown and a confirmation to run the Commerce Department anyway?
I have questions for the manager. Lots of them.
Why does a man who admitted palling around with the most notorious sex trafficker of our age still have a corner office down the hall from the president? Why does every person who pulls back the curtain on this crowd end up dead, discredited, or drowned out by the next news cycle? And when, exactly, did we decide that “I forgot about the island trip” counts as accountability in this town?
You know what galls me most? The quiet. If a whistleblower had exposed a Democrat commerce secretary’s Epstein ties, it’d be wall-to-wall coverage and congressional hearings before supper. Instead we get a polite little obituary in a trade paper and a shrug. Regular folks in this country can’t jaywalk without a fine, but a Cabinet secretary can lunch with Epstein, contradict himself under oath, and collect a paycheck from your tax dollars. That’s not a double standard, hon, that’s a whole separate rulebook with a velvet cover.
The powerful keep telling us to trust the process. Well, the process just buried another man who told the truth, and the man he told it about is still drawing a government salary. Simon Andriesz deserved better than a quiet funeral and a country that looks away. So did Virginia Giuffre. So did every kid on that island.
Say it plain: the truth-tellers keep dying and the well-connected keep getting promoted. Anybody who finds that comforting hasn’t been paying attention.