Lord Mandelson urged paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to ‘fight for early release’ when he was facing jail for child sex offences and assured him: ‘Your friends stay with you and love you.’
Bombshell new emails reveal Britain’s ambassador to the US assuring his ‘best pal’ Epstein just before he was convicted in 2008: ‘Everything can be turned into an opportunity.’
He told the warped financier – later found dead awaiting trial for molesting hundreds of schoolgirls – that ‘I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.
‘I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can.’
The astonishing email, sent between the pair’s private email addresses and revealed by The Sun, continued: ‘Everything can be turned into an opportunity and that you will come through it and be stronger for it.
‘The whole thing has been years of torture and now you have to show the world how big a person you are, and how strong.’
The damning emails appear to suggest Mandelson coached his friend through his ‘years of torture’ over teen sex allegations.
They were sent in June 2008, two years after Epstein had been arrested. The previous month, in May 2008, Epstein was given an ultimatum by senior prosecutors: finalise a plea deal or face an FBI federal prosecution that could potentially see him jailed for decades.
Then on June 30, after intense negotiations involving his lawyers, Epstein pleaded guilty in a Florida court to two counts of soliciting children for sex and given an 18-month jail term.
Sir Keir Starmer now faces intense pressure to sack his ambassador, just a week before the crucial state visit by Donald Trump in which Mandelson is due to play a key role. The Prime Minister gave his backing to Mandelson and pledged his ‘full confidence’ in the Labour grandee – the same assurance he gave Angela Rayner just before she had to quit less than a week ago.
It has emerged the British ambassador to Washington kept in touch with Epstein for four years after his jail term, and also visited the child predator’s homes, damaging correspondence shows.
Today under-pressure Lord Mandelson broke cover to give an interview in which he expressed ‘regret’ nine times – and warned that more ‘very embarrassing’ details will come out.
He admitted carrying on his ‘association’ with Epstein ‘for far longer than I should have done’, yet was elusive about the exact timings. Asked to specify ‘how long’, he swerved it by answering: ‘It was a matter of years…after I initially met him.’
Then he suggested it was 2009 when he fell for Epstein’s ‘lies’ – by saying it was ‘ten years’ before the world discovered the truth about Epstein, who was arrested in 2019. Mandelson told podcast Harry Cole Saves the West: ‘I regret very much that I fell for his lies…I regret being taken in by him, as many other people do, but it was ten years later, when he was federally prosecuted, that people suddenly learn what he had had been up to for all those years.’
However emails buried in court papers and a tribunal case reveal that Mandelson actually kept up the relationship until at least 2012 or 2013, four years after going to jail for soliciting underage sex.
Lord Mandelson – who once infamously declared himself ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’ – in a fluffy white dressing gown enjoying a chat with ‘my best pal’ Epstein
Lord Mandelson gazing out of a balcony window in what appears to be Epstein’s house on his private island in the Caribbean
Mandelson’s message in the ‘birthday book’ compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell said Epstein was ‘my best pal!’
Today the Prime Minister squirmed in the Commons as he was repeatedly grilled about his British ambassador’s links with the child abusing monster who was found dead in his cell in 2019 awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors.
Mandelson hailed the disgraced financier as ‘my best pal’ in a toe-curling greeting for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, which included holiday snaps of himself topless and wearing a fluffy white dressing gown on Epstein’s Caribbean island – dubbed ‘orgy island’ by one of his sex slaves.
Mandelson’s fawning 10-page message was among dozens in a 238-page album compiled by Epstein’s socialite girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, made public this week by US lawmakers.
Mandelson has long sought to play down his friendship with Epstein, who affectionately called him ‘Petie’. Unlike Prince Andrew, who insisted he hung out with Epstein because ‘I wanted to know more about the international business world’, Mandelson has claimed he ‘never had any kind of professional or business relationship’ with Epstein.
The American financier was also friends with Jes Staley, the former Barclays Bank boss. An email from August 2012, revealed in a tribunal case involving Mr Staley, is a note which Mandelson sent him about the ‘future of the financial sector’. Mandelson then forwarded this email to Epstein, boasting that ‘below is something I forwarded to your boy’ – a reference to Staley.
Another time, in 2013, Mandelson asked Epstein if he would assist him with a background check on an Israeli political consultant.
In his interview yesterday with Harry Cole of The Sun, Lord Mandelson claimed he ‘never sought and nor did he offer any introductions to women in the way that allegedly he did for others – perhaps because I am a gay man’.
Lord Mandelson with Jeffrey Epstein on December 12, 2005, where he is seen trying on a belt during a visit to a boutique in the Caribbean
Mandelson and a friend enjoy a boat ride together as guests of Epstein
Lord Mandelson, who was appointed by Sir Keir Starmer as Britain’s Ambassador to the US, is pictured here with Donald Trump in the Oval Office in May 2025
Mandelson admitted staying at Epstein’s homes, but claimed that was only ‘in the early years’. However the Staley emails suggest he stayed with Epstein in New York in 2012. Epstein emailed Mr Staley in May 2012 saying: ‘Peter Mandelson here at 5 — staying a couple of days.’ Mr Staley replied: ‘If I get back in time, I will swing by.’
Emails have also revealed how Lord Mandelson worked with Epstein on a £1billion deal over the sale of a UK-taxpayer owned banking business after the American had been convicted of child sex offences.
Critics questioned whether his position remains tenable, with less than a week to go before the crucial state visit by US President Donald Trump to the UK in which the Labour peer will play a key role.
Downing Street has suggested that Sir Keir was briefed in full on Lord Mandelson’s dealings with Epstein before appointing him as ambassador in February this year.
Sir Keir told MPs that ‘full due process was followed during this appointment, as it is with all ambassadors’.
No 10 said that Lord Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein was ‘a matter of public record’ before his appointment. The PM’s official spokesman said that all candidates for ambassador posts, including Lord Mandelson, are ‘subject to extensive vetting and background checks by the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office as a matter of course’.
The spokesman suggested that the PM had not been ‘surprised’ by any of the revelations to date, repeating that the vetting process had been followed in full.
The then Foreign Office minister Catherine West told Parliament in June that the purpose of the vetting was to ‘ensure that a person’s character and personal circumstances are such that they can be trusted to work in a position which may involve access to sensitive assets or sensitive sites.
Epstein victims have called for Lord Mandelson, 71, to be sacked.
A woman listed as a former assistant of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote of meeting the Duke of York and visiting the private quarters of Buckingham Palace
The unidentified woman wrote Epstein transformed her life from a hotel hostess
She told how she visited Buckingham Palace and sat on the Queen’s throne
Former ‘sex slave’ Sarah Ransome, 41, has said that ‘something is really, really wrong here’, telling The Telegraph: ‘Peter Mandelson should not be ambassador. He needs to be fired. He is unsuitable to be ambassador. Keir Starmer must have known all this.’
Epstein helped broker a major City deal involving Lord Peter Mandelson and US banking giant JP Morgan, court documents reveal.
The disgraced financier played a behind-the-scenes role in the February 2010 purchase of energy trading firm Sempra Commodities, which was owned by the taxpayer-funded Royal Bank of Scotland.
At the time, Mandelson was serving as business secretary under Gordon Brown.
Less than two years earlier, Epstein had been convicted of soliciting girls as young as 14 for prostitution.
Court filings and emails suggest Epstein acted as a go-between in the Sempra deal, making introductions between Mandelson and senior JP Morgan executives, including banker Jes Staley.
Referring to Mandelson as ‘Petie’, Epstein can be seen working behind the scenes to encourage both parties meet, discuss and finalise the £1 billion ($1.7bn) deal.
A birthday letter that US President Donald Trump allegedly wrote to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He denies its veracity
The White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has described the story as ‘fake news’
In an email dated 17 June 2009, Epstein told Staley that Mandelson would be staying at his house in Manhattan over the weekend, asking: ‘Do you want to organize either you, or you and Jamie, quiertly [sic], up to you.’
In October that year, he sent Staley an article about Gordon Brown’s apparent intention to sell off certain assets, adding: ‘This is why you should sit with Peter.’
On January 27 2010, Staley asked Epstein if he could arrange for him to meet Mandelson or then-chancellor Alistair Darling.
Two days later, Epstein emailed Staley saying: ‘my view is sempra is an asset that comes up once every ten years. How does it fit in the global strategy?. Does it give energy expertise. That is one of the big world needs.’
Later, he asked: ‘was petie helpful?’
Critics last night seized on the Sempra deal as evidence that the relationship between Epstein and Mandelson went beyond social introductions.
Lord Mandelson has always denied any business or financial relationship with Epstein.
He insisted today: ‘He operated in a financial and business way [that was] way, way above my level. He was a prolific social and political networker.’
The growing pile of disclosures is piling pressure on Sir Keir Starmer, who backed Mandelson’s appointment to Washington earlier this year.
The Prime Minister is now facing calls to release vetting documents to show whether Epstein’s name came up during the ambassadorial selection process.
Peter’s photo casebook – Lord Mandelson’s 10-page birthday greeting to Epstein:
The first page of Lord Mandelson’s 10-page birthday greeting to Jeffrey Epstein hails him as ‘mysterious’
On the second page, a topless Lord Mandelson wearing swimming shorts gazes out of a balcony, captioned: ‘…waiting for him to turn up’
The story continues on page 3 of the letter
Page 4: In one photo Mandelson is stood next to two females, one wearing a white vest and black underwear. Above, he writes that Epstein would leave ‘you with some ‘interesting’ friends to entertain’
Page 5 of the letter: reminiscing about dogs on the island
Page 6: how Epstein would ‘parachute back in’ to your life
Page 7: surprise whiskey reference
Page 8: apparently a holiday snap taken by Mandelson of Epstein’s Caribbean island
Page 9: Mandelson captioned this grinning photo of himself with Epstein and said he was ‘my best pal!’
Page 10: the final page of the letter, a happy snap of Mandelson with a friend, believed to be his long-term partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva
Lord Mandelson’s handwritten caption on the photo states that Epstein would go away and leave ‘you with some ‘interesting’ friends to entertain’.
Mrs Alexander said Lord Mandelson stayed there for a week with his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva, 53, whom he married two years ago.
She recalled him as a ‘gentleman’ and ‘a very nice guy’. The housekeeper said she had never seen anything untoward during her time looking after Epstein.
Maxwell, 63, is serving 20 years in jail for recruiting young girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
According to a court document filed in 2023, Epstein and Lord Mandelson had ‘a particularly close friendship’. A photo, thought to be from 2005, showed Lord Mandelson wearing a £21,000 Patek Philippe watch with Epstein in the US Virgin Islands.
By then Epstein was under police investigation over multiple allegations of sexually assaulting schoolgirls. There is no suggestion that Lord Mandelson, then on a taxpayer-funded £200,000 salary as EU trade commissioner, knew anything of the accusations.
For years, Epstein entertained an A-list roster of guests on his island, including Naomi Campbell and Kevin Spacey. Ex-US president Mr Clinton denies being a visitor, and all deny wrongdoing.
Mr Trump – who once told New York Magazine that Epstein ‘likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side’ – has played down his association with the financier.
Another drawing in the birthday book depicts a young Epstein enticing schoolgirls with balloons and lollipops, in 1983, and an older Epstein being massaged by topless women
Bill Clinton’s 50th birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein praising his ‘childlike curiosity’ is seen for the first time
Jeffery Epstein’s estate on Little St James Island in the US Virgin Islands. The disgraced financier also owned nearby Great St James island
An aerial view of Epstein’s 74-acre Little St James Island in the US Virgin Islands
Prince Andrew during his infamous BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis
An undated photo issued by the US Department of Justice of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell with American financier Jeffrey Epstein
Virginia Roberts holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Epstein began abusing her sexually
In the ‘birthday book’, there is a bawdy sketch allegedly signed by Mr Trump showing a woman’s body with the line: ‘Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret’. The White House says it is ‘fake news’.
Mr Clinton’s birthday message praised Epstein’s ‘childlike curiosity’. Mr Clinton has long maintained he did not know of the allegations against Epstein.
Another drawing in the birthday book depicts a young Epstein enticing schoolgirls with balloons and lollipops, and an older Epstein being massaged by topless women, while a jet – presumably the billionaire’s infamous ‘Lolita Express’ – flies over his mansion.
Lord Mandelson said: ‘I feel a profound sense of sympathy for those women who suffered as a result of his behaviour, criminal activity.
‘I regret very, very deeply indeed carrying on that association with him for far longer than I should have done. During all the time I was an associate of his, I never saw the wrongdoing, I never saw any evidence of criminal activity. I never sought and nor did he offer any introductions to women in the way that allegedly he did for others – perhaps it’s because I am a gay man.’
