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The British ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, told Jeffrey Epstein to “fight for early release” and wrote: “your friends stay with you and love you” when the disgraced financier was facing charges of procuring a child for prostitution, according to leaked emails.
The emails, first published by the Sun after circulating in Washington DC, will put further pressure on Mandelson after he admitted on Tuesday that more “very embarrassing” details of his friendship with Epstein were likely to emerge but insisted he had never seen any “wrongdoing”.
In an email from June 2008, which was not disputed by his spokesperson, Mandelson wrote to Epstein: “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.”
It continued: “Everything can be turned into an opportunity and that you will come through it and be stronger for it.”
The friendship between the two men has come back under the spotlight after Democratic members of the US House oversight committee released Epstein’s 50th “birthday book”, in which Mandelson called him “my best pal” in a handwritten note.
The Telegraph reported that when Mandelson was business secretary in 2010, and after the financier’s release from jail, he allowed Epstein to help broker a deal for JP Morgan to buy part of a commodities firm from the UK government-owned RBS bank.
No 10 stood firmly behind Mandelson on Wednesday, saying he had been fully security checked before taking up the role and was the right person for the job.
One person familiar with Mandelson’s process said he had been subject to the highest level of checking, called developed vetting – which is likely to have touched on his association with Epstein given it was publicly known at the time of his appointment.
However, the new emails are likely to raise further questions about whether the prime minister knew the full extent of Mandelson’s support for Epstein when he appointed him US ambassador earlier this year.
The Conservatives have called for Mandelson to be sacked and the Lib Dems demanded an investigation by the civil service commissioner into whether the diplomatic service code has been broken.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said they were “sickening revelations” and that Mandelson’s position was 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. Peter Mandelson needs to be fired now,” she said.
A number of Labour MPs are privately furious about Keir Starmer’s judgment in appointing Mandelson to the job, knowing that he kept up his association with Epstein after the businessman had served a jail term, which ended in 2009, for soliciting girls under 14.
One MP said No 10 had appeared to view the scandal around Epstein and Mandelson as “a silly internet conspiracy” rather than taking it seriously, while another said the “boys’ club” in Downing Street had rallied round him without considering the consequences.
Two Labour MPs, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kim Johnson, called for Mandelson to quit, while the US lawyer Gloria Allred, who has represented 27 of Epstein’s victims, said the US ambassador should answer questions in front of a congressional hearing.
Mandelson has previously claimed not to have had a business relationship with Epstein and told the FT to “fuck off” when it questioned him about the financier in June.
However, in an interview earlier this week with the Sun, he said he had been deceived by Epstein’s “lies” and described the scandal as “like an albatross around my neck”. Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting further charges of trafficking young girls.
At prime minister’s questions, Starmer was pressed on whether he had known that Mandelson, when business secretary in 2010, had reportedly allowed Epstein to help broker the sale of a UK government-owned business to a US bank months after the financier’s release from jail.
He said that “full due process was gone through when the appointment was made”, although Mandelson claimed on Tuesday night that he had not discussed the matter with the prime minister.
Starmer said the victims of Epstein were “at the forefront of our minds” and described Epstein as a “despicable criminal who committed the most heinous crimes and destroyed the lives of so many women and girls”.
“The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him. He’s right to do so. I have confidence in him and he’s playing an important role in the UK-US relationship,” the prime minister said.
Badenoch called for all of Mandelson’s correspondence with Epstein to be released and pressed for more details on how much Starmer knew about the relationship.
“The Daily Telegraph reports today that while Lord Mandelson was business secretary, he brokered a deal with Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary, and that this occurred after Epstein had been convicted of child sex offences. Given this new information, does the prime minister really think it is tenable for our ambassador to remain in post?” she said.
Starmer said the relationship between the US and the UK “is one of our foremost relationships, and I have confidence in the ambassador in the role that he is doing”.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, also increased pressure on Starmer by asking whether it was appropriate for Mandelson to remain in his position as the key liaison between the UK and US when the Trump administration may possess further embarrassing material on his dealings with Epstein.
Trump, the US president, is also under scrutiny over his relationship with Epstein, having also allegedly contributed to his 50th birthday book – although he has denied its authenticity and dismissed it as a fake.
