Campaigning with Chris Pappas in Manchester, the former transportation secretary called Sununu “very much a creature of Washington” who is “mixed up with some very unsavory characters.”
Former US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday that Republican Senate nominee John E. Sununu has never put voters’ minds at rest about his mention in the Epstein files.
Buttigieg made the comments in Manchester while campaigning with US Rep. Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 3 race to replace retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D).
Asked by Granite Post about Sununu’s place in the files and his false answer about traveling to Doha, Qatar, Buttigieg tied Sununu to voters’ frustration with Washington.
“Every time I look at a story about John Sununu, I see everything that people are so frustrated about with Washington,” Buttigieg said. “He is obviously very much a creature of Washington, somebody who was in the Senate when I was a kid, basically, and who is mixed up with some very unsavory characters.”
“Being involved in the Epstein files is something that he has never really satisfactorily put people’s minds at rest around,” he said.
Sununu served six years in the US House and one term in the Senate before losing his seat to Shaheen in 2008.
What is Sununu’s connection to the Epstein files?
Sununu’s name appears in a May 2010 email in which convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein told biotech investor Boris Nikolic, “john sununu, has good stories.”
Jeffrey Epstein was a millionaire financier and convicted sex offender who died in a New York jail in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges, and the Epstein files are millions of pages of records about him that the US Department of Justice has released under a federal transparency law.
Nikolic had sent Epstein a list of people attending a World Economic Forum summit in Doha and asked whom he should meet. The email doesn’t say whether Epstein meant the Senate candidate or his father, former Gov. John H. Sununu.
Asked on camera in March whether he had ever been to Doha, Sununu said, “No.” In July, The Washington Post reported that his campaign acknowledged he attended the 2010 summit. He also went to Doha in 2001 with a congressional delegation.
Democrats, including former US Rep. Annie Kuster and California Rep. Ro Khanna, have called on Sununu to “come clean” about any ties to Epstein.
Sununu’s campaign has called the mention a fabrication and says neither Sununu nor his father ever met or communicated with Epstein or Nikolic. In a July statement to the New Hampshire Union Leader, spokesman Mike Schrimpf called Democrats’ criticism “a disgusting and baseless smear campaign.”
What else did Buttigieg say about Sununu?
Buttigieg also went after Sununu’s agenda, which he described as “being against people getting healthcare” and “being for diverting money toward tax cuts for the biggest corporations and wealthiest people in the country.”
Sununu has said he supports work requirements for Medicaid, rules that make some people prove they are working to keep their health coverage.
“He is just on the wrong side of Granite Staters and on the wrong side of Americans on issue after issue after issue,” Buttigieg said. He added that Sununu’s “let’s call it unimpressive personal record and how he’s behaved and spent his time” make the choice in the race clear.
“He’s either supporting what Trump wants or he’s totally silent,” Pappas, standing beside Buttigieg, said of Sununu. Trump endorsed Sununu in February.
Buttigieg, who led New Hampshire’s 2028 Democratic presidential field in an August Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll, was set to headline a rally in Rochester Friday night with Pappas, Congressional candidate Stefany Shaheen, and gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington.
