While the sender of the email is redacted in the published file, the black redaction box does not completely cover his email address in one reference on the chain.
Other emails from the same period suggest Lord Mandelson travelled to Mykonos, which he also referred to as “Myk” in a separate email, external.
The correspondence is just one exchange between Lord Mandelson and Epstein revealed in the US Department of Justice releases that sheds new light on the friendship between the men.
In other published emails from 2009, Lord Mandelson asks how they should celebrate Epstein’s release from prison, to which the disgraced financier responds: “With grace and modesty (those are the names of two strippers)”.
A spokesperson for the peer said: “Lord Mandelson regrets, and will regret until to his dying day, that he believed Epstein’s lies about his criminality.
“Lord Mandelson did not discover the truth about Epstein until after his death in 2019.
“He is profoundly sorry that powerless and vulnerable women and girls were not given the protection they deserved.”
Epstein died in a New York prison cell in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.