Documents released by the Department of Justice appear to show that Peter Mandelson leaked sensitive U.K. government emails to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a minister.
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According to the files, Mandelson forwarded internal Downing Street emails about tax policy proposals to Epstein while a member of former prime minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet in 2009, appending the comment: “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”
The private memo was drafted by a senior adviser in Brown’s office on June 13 that year — the same day Mandelson shared it. The note proposed tax incentives to encourage private sector investment after the financial crisis, as well as the possibility of making £20 billion ($27 billion) of asset sales to reduce government debt.
According to the files, Epstein replied to Mandelson asking: “What salable assets?”
Mandelson, the former Labour business secretary and later ambassador to Washington, responded: “Land, property I guess.”
The exchange came a week before Mandelson was scheduled to stay at Epstein’s New York home, according to an email from Epstein sent on June 17, 2009, which was included in previously released documents.
Emailed requests for comment to Peter Mandelson and the U.S. Department of Justice weren’t immediately returned.
Following the fresh DoJ release of documentation relating to the Epstein case, Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested Mandelson should resign from Britain’s unelected upper legislature.
“The prime minister believes that Peter Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords,” Starmer’s spokesperson Tom Wells told reporters Monday. He added that it was not currently within the premier’s power to remove him from the upper chamber himself.
Mandelson quit the Labour Party over the weekend in order to avoid causing it “further embarrassment” after the documents released Friday suggested the financier made payments to him and his partner totaling £75,000. Mandelson said he believed the allegations to be “false” and had “no record or recollection” of such payments.
Separately, Labour issued a statement saying “disciplinary action” had already been underway before Mandelson quit the party. That can no longer be pursued after Mandelson gave up the membership.
The scandal will place further scrutiny on Starmer, who appointed Mandelson as his envoy to the U.S. when Labour won power in 2024. Mandelson resigned from that post when a Bloomberg News investigation found his links to Epstein went far beyond what he had previously disclosed.
Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch said Starmer “has consistently looked the other way when it comes to Mandelson’s past, even avoiding proper vetting.” She said Starmer “bears full responsibility for bringing Mandelson back into British public life despite knowing about the relationship with Epstein.”
It’s for the police to decide whether Mandelson should be investigated over the leaks, Wells told reporters, when asked about some of the information the former envoy appeared to have shared in 2009.
