Lord Mandelson apparently found time while an EU Commissioner to join forces with a mysterious ‘Mr Big’ to fight for sex child predator Jeffrey Epstein as the FBI closed in, new emails reveal.
The Labour grandee once known as the Prince of Darkness appears to have worked behind the scenes with his ‘best pal’ paedophile to save him from looming charges of molesting teenagers.
In a fresh cache of devastating emails overnight, the now-ex British ambassador to Washington wrote to Epstein in 2006, ‘What’s cooking?’ after Florida police decided to charge him with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation. Mandelson added: ‘Here whenever you need.’
The latest emails, obtained by Bloomberg, reveal that Mandelson’s jaw-dropping ‘I think the world of you…you must fight for early release’ email was sent to the convicted paedophile on the day before he reported to prison to start his 18-month sentence.
Epstein also seemed to think his friend could pull strings, as EU Trade Commissioner, to fix him a pardon.
From a computer in prison, he emailed Mandelson to ask if he had met Florida’s Governor who was visiting Europe and ‘would be instrumental’ in obtaining a pardon for the financier, at the time languishing in a Florida jail.
The creepy holiday snap that triggered his downfall: Lord Mandelson 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!’
In one cryptic email exchange in the Bloomberg cache, Epstein referred to a ‘Mr Big’. As he faced a criminal investigation, he messaged Mandelson: ‘Peter, Mr Big has a meeting Thursday…I need your guy to remind him…’
This was in January 2008, and the FBI had been pursuing a sex-trafficking probe which led to agents discovering more than 30 potential underage victims. Prosecutors were in talks with Epstein’s lawyers about a ‘plea deal’ in which he would plead guilty to a lesser crime of soliciting underage sex in return for the FBI inquiry to be shelved.
At the start of 2008, Mandelson – who was at the time Britain’s EU Commissioner – told his financier friend of a discussion he had with an unnamed contact who he believed could help him with his legal difficulties.
In a message on January 7, Mandelson wrote that his contact had told him, ‘I will really go for it on your friend now that his case is a bit more realistically salvageable’.
Then a week later, Epstein told Mandelson about ‘Mr Big’. He wrote: ‘Peter, Mr Big has a meeting Thursday with Lefky’. Lekfy is believed to be Jay Lefkowitz, who was one of Epstein’s defence lawyers. ‘Lefky is the way Mr Big refers to him,’ Epstein wrote. He asked Mandelson: ‘I need your guy to remind him one time before the meeting.. then we are done.’
Mandelson – whose emails were automatically signed with ‘The Rt. Hon. Peter Mandelson European Commissioner for Trade’ – replied: ‘I will get a message. He is travelling at moment.’
Bloomberg’s email cache does not reveal the identities of either ‘Mr Big’ or ‘you guy’.
Criticism will now turn to Sir Keir’s judgment, with MPs warning the party is ‘stained at the very top’. The PM pictured with Lord Mandelson in February
The damning emails appear to suggest Mandelson coached his friend through his ‘years of torture’ over the teen sex allegations.
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
In a message on January 7, Mandelson wrote that his contact had told him, ‘I will really go for it on your friend now that his case is a bit more realistically salvageable’.
Then a week later, Epstein told Mandelson about ‘Mr Big’. He wrote: ‘Peter, Mr Big has a meeting Thursday with Lefky’. Lekfy is believed to be Jay Lefkowitz, who was one of Epstein’s defence lawyers. ‘Lefky is the way Mr Big refers to him,’ Epstein wrote. He asked Mandelson: ‘I need your guy to remind him one time before the meeting.. then we are done.’
Mandelson – whose emails were automatically signed with ‘The Rt. Hon. Peter Mandelson European Commissioner for Trade’ – replied: ‘I will get a message. He is travelling at moment.’
Bloomberg’s email cache does not reveal the identities of either ‘Mr Big’ or ‘you guy’.
Epstein’s furious victims called for him to face a police investigation. Spencer Kuvin, a lawyer representing several of them, said: ‘The man is disgusting for his clear close friendship with a paedophile. He should be investigated himself instead of being promoted to a government position. Ignoring his behaviour is a stain on the entire British establishment.’
Lisa Bloom, another lawyer, added simply: ‘Truly appalling.’ Former Epstein ‘sex slave’ Sarah Ransome, 41, has demanded: ‘He needs to be fired.’
The emails were allegedly sent in June 2008, two years after Epstein had been arrested. The previous month, in May, Epstein had been 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. He was given an 18-month jail term.
Sir Keir told MPs that ‘full due process was followed during this appointment, as it is with all ambassadors’.
After the new emails emerged, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: ‘Mandelson’s position is untenable. Why did Starmer defend him today? How was “full due process” followed? This is a weak Prime Minister, leading a Government mired in scandal. The public deserves better.’
It also emerged the now former 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.
Under-pressure Lord Mandelson broke cover on Wednesday morning to give an interview in which he expressed his ‘regret’ nine times – and warned that more ‘very embarrassing’ details would come out, which they did just hours later.
Lord Mandelson told the podcast Harry Cole Saves the West: ‘I regret very much that I fell for his lies. I fell and accepted assurances he had given me about his indictment his original criminal case in Florida. Like many, many people, I took at face value what he said. With hindsight, with fresh information many years later, we realised we were wrong to believe him. He is a charismatic criminal liar, we now see.’
He added: ‘I feel a profound sense of sympathy for those women who suffered as a result of his behaviour, criminal activity.’
‘And 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.’
Yet he was elusive about the exact timings. Asked to specify ‘how long’ he had carried on the relationship ‘far longer than I should have done’, he swerved the question 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 said ‘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.
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.
In his interview 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, 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
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 was due to have played a key role.
Downing Street 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’.
Peter’s photo casebook – Lord Mandelson’s 10-page birthday greeting to Epstein that triggered his downfall:
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.
Before being sacked, 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.’
