Bessent Declines To Defend Lutnick After Commerce Secretary Comes Under Fire Amid Nvidia Scandal

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he does not know why the Singaporean technology firm at the center of the Nvidia national security scandal is not subject to tighter trade restrictions, given reports about its suspected role as a pass-through for Nvidia chips to China.Megaspeed’s absence from the “Entity List” — a collection of governments, businesses, and individuals subject to certain trade restrictions — is a curious oversight by the Commerce Department given a presidential order that bars sophisticated semiconductor chips from getting into China’s hands, Mr. Bessent said. But, he added, he is more interested in Nvidia’s corporate governance than the Commerce Department’s list.“I’ll leave the internal workings of the Commerce Department to the Commerce Department,” Mr. Bessent told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding, “Commerce has the pen. You will have to ask them about their internal processes.”Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is under increasing scrutiny amid the fallout from the abrupt resignation of Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang last week, precipitated by his affair with at least two and possibly more women, including one suspected of being a spy for the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Lutnick could be called before Congress to answer questions about the possible sale of advanced Nvidia chips to China through Megaspeed, which employed one of Mr. Huang’s mistresses, Alice Huang, no relation. Megaspeed is suspected of acting as a shell company to allow Chinese firms access to Nvidia’s most advanced chips. Several top Republicans in Congress, including the chairmen of the committees on Foreign Affairs and Intelligence, as well as the chairman of the Select Committee on Communist China — are threatening to subpoena Mr. Huang for testimony if he does not appear for a closed-door interview in early December. However, the head of the Intelligence Committee, Congressman Rick Crawford, says it may be too soon to call for Mr. Lutnick to sit for a deposition. “[It’s] a little premature for us to be placing blame anywhere, and I think we want to make sure that we have a better understanding of exactly what happened,” Mr. Crawford said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday,” adding that he believes Mr. Lutnick will come in voluntarily to give lawmakers a “better understanding” of what happened. Several Republican senators disagree with Mr. Crawford. The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Tim Scott, says Mr. Lutnick has to address questions about what happened. In a letter sent to Mr. Lutnick last week, Mr. Scott invited him to testify on December 10. He wrote that the Commerce Department’s actions raise “national security concerns.”Another member of the Banking Committee, Senator Jim Banks, was even more critical, saying that the Trump administration officials who tried to get the Commerce Department to add Megaspeed to the Entity List were “heroes.” “After Secretary Lutnick was made aware of these allegations of Chinese espionage and the relationships that Jensen Huang … had with the CEO of Megaspeed, why did he not close that loophole? Why did he allow chip diversion and chip smuggling to continue to occur?” Mr. Banks asked during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” He said he wanted to hear from Mr. Lutnick “even more” than he wanted to hear from Mr. Huang. While not directly throwing Mr. Lutnick under the bus, Mr. Bessent’s lack of defense of his colleague followed other comments he made during an appearance on CNBC on Friday in which he claimed that the Treasury Department, the Pentagon, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, and the State Department all wanted to see Megaspeed placed on the Entity List. Mr. Lutnick’s department did not act. Mr. Bessent said whether or not Ms. Huang is a spy is less relevant than Nvidia’s failure to address internally its compliance with national security rules issued by President Trump regarding which chips may be sold abroad. Mr. Bessent said that he is curious to “examine whether Nvidia has a culture of compliance.” “Was it a low-level fail, was it in the middle, or was it up in the C-suite, and who knew?” Mr. Bessent asked. He added that the next head of Nvidia should be brought in from outside the company.

Bessent Declines To Defend Lutnick After Commerce Secretary Comes Under Fire Amid Nvidia Scandal

Bessent Declines To Defend Lutnick After Commerce Secretary Comes Under Fire Amid Nvidia Scandal

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