{"id":139277,"date":"2025-09-15T16:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/139277\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T16:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:39:07","slug":"id-have-never-appointed-mandelson-if-i-knew-full-epstein-links-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/139277\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019d have \u2018never appointed\u2019 Mandelson if I knew full Epstein links \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The PM added: \u201cBut had I known then what I know now, I\u2019d have never appointed him, because what emerged last week were emails, Bloomberg emails, which showed that the nature and extent of the relationship that Peter Mandelson had with Epstein was far different to what I had understood to be the position when I appointed him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/features\/2025-jeffrey-epstein-emails-peter-mandelson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Leaked emails to Bloomberg<\/a> showed Mandelson wrote to Epstein \u201cI think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened,\u201d\u00a0the day before Epstein begin serving time for soliciting sex from a minor in June 2008. <\/p>\n<p>Mandelson said he should \u201cfight for early release\u201d and told Epstein\u00a0\u201cyour friends stay with you and love you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The PM said this \u201cwent and cut across the whole approach that I\u2019ve taken on violence against women and girls for many years,\u201d and Mandelson\u2019s responses to questions from government officials were not \u201cat all satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Just 24 hours before Mandelson\u2019s sacking, Starmer said at prime minister\u2019s questions that \u201cfull due process was followed\u201d\u00a0during <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/uk-pmqs-keir-starmer-gets-headache-as-kemi-badenoch-probes-peter-mandelson-jeffrey-epstein-ties\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mandelson\u2019s selection last year<\/a> and he had confidence in him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The PM added: \u201cBut had I known then what I know now, I\u2019d have never appointed him, because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[625,39097,59,57,58,420,50,424,56,54,158,55,637],"class_list":["post-139277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-british-politics","tag-due-diligence","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-keir-starmer","tag-news","tag-peter-mandelson","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-westminster-bubble"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}