Mandelson

Police are looking into allegations Peter Mandelson may have passed sensitive government information to Jeffrey Epstein.

British politician Peter Mandelson is stepping down from the United Kingdom’s upper house of Parliament amid renewed scrutiny and the prospect of a criminal review into his ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The speaker of the House of Lords, Michael Forsyth, said on Tuesday that Mandelson, 72, had notified the chamber of his intention to resign. Forsyth said the move would come into effect on Wednesday.

Mandelson, a former UK ambassador to the United States and longtime senior figure in the country’s Labour Party, has come under intense pressure following the release of a new tranche of US government documents related to Epstein.

The material includes emails from Mandelson to Epstein sharing political insights, including market-sensitive information during the 2008 financial crisis that critics say may have broken the law.

British police have said they are assessing reports of possible misconduct “to determine if they meet the criminal threshold for investigation”.

The files also include bank documents suggesting Epstein transferred tens of thousands of dollars to accounts linked to Mandelson or his partner, Reinaldo Avila da Silva. Mandelson has said he does not recall such transactions and will examine the documents.

Additional material includes emails suggesting a friendly relationship between the two men after Epstein’s 2008 convictions for sex offences, as well as an image showing Mandelson in his underwear beside a woman whose face was obscured by US authorities.

Mandelson told the BBC that he “cannot place the location or the woman, and I cannot think what the circumstances were”.

Starmer says he’s ‘appalled’

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Tuesday told his cabinet he was “appalled by the information” regarding Mandelson and was concerned more details would come to light, according to a Downing Street readout of a cabinet meeting.

Starmer also said he has ordered the civil service to conduct an “urgent” review of all of Mandelson’s contacts with Epstein while he was in government.

“The alleged passing on of emails of highly sensitive government business was disgraceful,” the prime minister said, adding he was not yet “reassured that the totality of information had yet emerged” regarding Mandelson’s links with Epstein.

Mandelson, who was sacked from his post as British ambassador to the US in September following earlier revelations about his Epstein ties, quit the Labour Party on Sunday to avoid what he called “further embarrassment”.

In an interview with The Times conducted late last month and published on Tuesday, Mandelson described Epstein as a “master manipulator,” adding: “I’ve had a lot of bad luck, no doubt some of it of my own making.”

According to the Daily Telegraph, Lord Mandelson is set to be summoned to US Congress to give evidence about his links to Epstein. Sources close to the House Oversight Committee, which the paper says has “spearheaded” the release of the Epstein files, say they are “poised to issue” Lord Mandelson with a demand to testify in Washington DC. The committee cannot compel testimony from foreigners, as the paper notes.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Peter Mandelson says he is stepping down to avoid causing further embarrassment to the governing party.

Peter Mandelson, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, has resigned from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party following further revelations of his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, UK media have reported.

Mandelson, who was removed as London’s top representative in Washington last year after the emergence of emails detailing his associations with Epstein, said he had resigned to avoid causing further embarrassment to the governing party, the reports said on Sunday.

“I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and I feel regretful and sorry about this,” Mandelson said in a letter reported by the BBC and The Guardian.

Mandelson said he believed that reports over the weekend that he had received several payments from Epstein in the early 2000s were false, but that he needed to investigate them, the reports said.

“While doing this I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party,” Mandelson said, according to the reports.

More to follow…