{"id":403942,"date":"2026-02-02T14:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T14:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/403942\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T14:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T14:33:07","slug":"mandelson-appeared-to-send-uk-government-plans-to-epstein-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/403942\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandelson appeared to send UK government plans to Epstein \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The correspondence covers Whitehall thinking at the time of a major economic crisis, and it is highly unusual for such top-level discussions to be circulated outside of the British government. The exchange took place a year after Epstein, the late financier, pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.<\/p>\n

In the chain, Mandelson wrote: \u201cInteresting note that\u2019s gone to the PM.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epstein replied: \u201cWhat salable assets?\u201d<\/p>\n

The message by Butler was also sent to Brown\u2019s key civil service aide Jeremy Heywood, his Private Secretary Christina Scott and Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office Shriti Vadera. There is no suggestion any of them were aware the exchange would be forwarded on to Epstein.<\/p>\n

Mandelson \u2014 who was\u00a0sacked as Britain\u2019s ambassador to Washington in September<\/a> after emails emerged showing he sent supportive messages to Epstein while the financier was facing charges for soliciting a minor in 2008 \u2014 did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized \u201cunequivocally\u201d to Epstein\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n

A separate <\/a>email, sent to Epstein in August 2009, highlighted notes from Heywood and Vadera about business investment and the Bank of England\u2019s priorities. The identity of the person who forwarded this exchange to Epstein is redacted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The correspondence covers Whitehall thinking at the time of a major economic crisis, and it is highly unusual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[625,59,76430,57,58,150806,50,424,56,54,158,55,637],"class_list":["post-403942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-british-politics","tag-gb","tag-gordon-brown","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-jeremy-heywood","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\/403942","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=403942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}