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MAGA Hardliner Turns on Trump Goon Over Spy Sex Scandal

One of the president’s closest allies is coming under fire, even from within the GOP.

A Trump-endorsed Republican senator has thrown the president’s sycophantic commerce secretary into the firing line in the wake of tech billionaire Jensen Huang’s sex scandal.

Indiana Sen. Jim Banks has called for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify before Congress “ASAP” regarding his role in helping Nvidia circumvent legislation to sell its chips to Chinese companies.

“Now we know that the Department of Commerce, Secretary Lutnick, it appears used loopholes to allow some of these chip sales to occur, even though President Trump has directed his administration and the Department of Commerce not to allow that to happen,” Banks, 47, told Fox News’ John Roberts on Thursday.

He continued, “So not only do I hope for Jensen Huang to come and testify, but I would like for Secretary Lutnick, ASAP, to come testify before the Senate Banking Committee, because we have a lot of bipartisan questions and concerns about what’s happened over the last year that would allow some of these issues to continue to occur—chips being exported, it appears, defying President Trump’s orders for those exports to be stopped.”

Banks, who supported Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies while serving as an Indiana congressman, introduced the bipartisan AI OVERWATCH Act in May, which was co-sponsored by Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“Jensen Huang’s decision to resign from NVIDIA does not absolve him, other executives, or the company as a whole of responsibility for putting our national security at risk or for any potential violations of our laws,” Warren wrote in an X post on Thursday. “They still owe Congress answers.”

Despite their political differences, Banks told Fox News he completely agreed with Warren’s statement.

“I disagree with Sen. Warren on 99.9 percent of issues on Capitol Hill, but this is the area where we strongly agree and where we work together,” he told Roberts.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Commerce Department and Banks’ office for comment.

Senior White House officials are deciding whether to fire Lutnick, 65, amid concerns that American national security has been compromised following ex-Nvidia CEO Huang’s scandal.

Both Republican and Democratic legislators have criticized the commerce secretary over the government’s oversight of Nvidia’s exports to China and the administration’s refusal to add dozens of Chinese companies to a U.S. trade blacklist.

Huang, 63, admitted to having an extramarital affair with a business executive from the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, Alice Huang, on Sunday. U.S. intelligence identified Huang, who is not related to the billionaire tech founder, as a suspected Chinese spy.

On Thursday, Huang resigned as Nvidia’s president and CEO after reports that he had had another affair with company executive Kimberly Powell. Reuters reported later on Thursday that Huang had a third affair with another unnamed Nvidia employee.

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Vic VerbalaitisNight Breaking News Reporter

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