Epstein files: Mandelson emails and royal ties examined (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio. It's Joe Pike in Westminster. And here in the studio with me is our Senior Royal Correspondent, Daniela Ralph. Hello again.

[00:00:08] Speaker 2: Hi, Adam. Hi, Joe.

[00:00:09] Speaker 1: So, Daniela, a busy weekend for you going through all of these documents, because now there is a total of three and a half million documents I was reading on the Department of Justice website.

[00:00:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Could I just say from the start, it's not me individually going through three and a half million documents on behalf of the BBC. We've got a team that we're working with who we're trying to trawl through as much of the material as possible. It's taking a while, which is why people might have noticed that since Friday night, it's like a bit of a drip feed because stuff is just coming up. We're searching particular terms in all of the documents. We're checking the photos, the images, the receipts, the emails, everything we can find. So it's not going to be an easy process. And I think in the days ahead, things are just going to continue emerging.

[00:00:48] Speaker 1: And also, Daniela, it's not it's not like a database where you can do a quick control F of things. It's loads and loads of PDFs and zip files that you have to download from the website. And they're just called things like E143444367.pdf.

[00:01:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not seeing things that say Prince Andrew email to Jeffrey Epstein with a date, exactly as you say. They've all got very, very long coded numbers. It's quite a clumsy, clunky website. It takes time to look at everything. You have to sort of close things down to open something else up and all sorts of funny bits and pieces that make it a little bit more difficult to trawl through everything.

[00:01:23] Speaker 1: And also, Joe, when we're looking at email chains, a lot of the email addresses are redacted. They've got like a black blob over them to protect people's privacy, which means sometimes you can't say for definite this is person X emailing Jeffrey Epstein about this subject. Absolutely.

[00:01:38] Speaker 3: That is an added challenge. One advantage, though, of all of this being in the public domain, three million documents released last Friday, is that anyone can have a go looking through. So actually, even though there are huge numbers of people at the BBC looking through these documents, about 6,000 about Peter Mandelson, there are other news organisations, people across the world who are also looking at them. So what we've also been doing is seeing what other people have found, trying to match those claims or revelations to PDFs in the Epstein files tranche from the US government. Then maybe try and work out whether the point about redactions, whether there is clarity over who an email might be to or from. And then, of course, try and get a right of reply from whoever is included in those conversations.

[00:02:31] Speaker 1: And also, Daniela, we talked about redactions, but some of Jeffrey Epstein's victims and survivors are saying it's not been redacted enough. And actually, some people's data has been revealed in this process.

[00:02:41] Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's a tricky area because you've got some people saying, hang on a minute, I didn't know this was going to be made public. I didn't want my name out there. I didn't want my image out there or anything that I'd said or emailed anyone. So you've got that added complication of trying to make sure that the material you have is treating the people mentioned in it fairly. So you've got all sorts of checks and balances that you're trying to do with it all the time. I mean, it is an awful lot of work, and I think people will see more and more stories emerge on a day to day basis. How much more time is it going to take for everyone to feel like they've done it? I mean, it could be years. It could be. I mean, I think over the course of this week, we are still going to see a number of stories emerging as people dig down into the material.

[00:03:20] Speaker 1: And it's not just documents and emails and PDFs. It also includes media like this interview reportedly done by Steve Bannon, the political activist, where you hear Jeffrey Epstein speaking. And Jeffrey Epstein is the second voice you will hear in this clip.

[00:03:38] Speaker 4: You're a mathematician. We walked into that clinic where they're giving that money out to these people that are the most dire straits of poverty and sickness and told them that the money was coming from a what are you, class three sexual predator?

[00:03:52] Speaker 5: Tier one.

[00:03:53] Speaker 4: Tier one is the highest and worst? No, I'm the lowest. You're the lowest. Tier one, you're the lowest. But a criminal. Yes. That the money came from. What what percentage of people do you estimate? I understand you don't like probabilities. Do you estimate would say, I don't care. I want the money for my children.

[00:04:09] Speaker 5: I would say everyone said, I want the money for my children. Did they know where the money came from? I think if you told them the devil himself, the devil himself said, I'm going to exchange some dollars for your child's life.

[00:04:22] Speaker 4: Do you think you're the devil himself?

[00:04:25] Speaker 5: No, but I do have a good mirror.

[00:04:28] Speaker 4: It's a serious question. I'm sorry. Do you think you're the devil itself? I don't know. Why would you say that? Because you have all the attributes. You're incredibly smart. You remember the devil is somebody knows what?

[00:04:38] Speaker 1: It's quite a confusing conversation, but actually, Daniela, just listening to that, I've only just clocked. That's the only time most of us will hear Epstein talking about his own criminality because he had he was convicted. He was he was on facing further charges when he took his own life. But that's him talking about when he was convicted back in 2008.

[00:04:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And pushing back on the tier of of classification of his crime in that conversation. But I think for me, as you said earlier, what is most interesting is just getting a sense of the man and who he is and what he's like and what struck me watching that. And the only other moving material I've seen of him before. So he's in that video standing next to a much younger Donald Trump. They're sort of in a party of some kind. And you get a sort of flavor of him in that as well, which is there is a real sense of sort of laid back, relaxed, arrogance, coolness with himself, self-confidence about him. And that comes across in this as well. You know, he was pushing back there on the questions about his crimes. Relatively unperturbed by that. Very, very happy to to to deal with it and answer it. It's just interesting because one of the, you know, the constant fascinations about it is what was it about Epstein that drew all these people in? Are we getting a flavor of it? There is just something about him that is very cool, very confident and and draws people into him.

[00:05:57] Speaker 1: And of course, Joe, one of the people who was friends with him and now says he regrets ever being friends with him is Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson. Last time we were talking about Peter Mandelson and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, it was all around him being fired as the ambassador in Washington, D.C. Now it's about another part of Peter Mandelson's career, which is when he was the business secretary under Gordon Brown in the last few months, last few years of the last Labour government. Exactly.

[00:06:25] Speaker 3: 2008 to 2010. And there are so many emails which still, even though the Mandelson Epstein part of this saga has been going on for many months, is still pretty jaw dropping. And the sort of most significant new revelations are around Peter Mandelson seemingly forwarding private emails between senior figures in government that could be potentially financially sensitive. One of them that I think is probably the most striking was an email where he seems to give Epstein advance notice of an enormous EU bailout after the financial crisis. Epstein emailed Mandelson, sources tell me 500 billion euro bailout almost complete. There was a reply seemingly from Mandelson, although this is one of the cases where the email address is redacted, that said should be announced tonight. And hours later, EU finance ministers did indeed approve that bailout. What I think we've seen overnight, Adam, is also significant. Over the weekend, there were various further allegations which gave us a better, clearer picture of the social relationship and the alleged financial relationship between these two men, which I think was clearly pretty problematic. I think now we've stepped into potentially being at the stage where there could have been a serious abuse of power here because there seems to have been so much contact between the pair about what the UK government was doing. And opposition parties in Westminster here are pretty frustrated about that. And some of them, including the SNP and Reform UK, want the police to investigate.

[00:08:14] Speaker 1: And Joe, we'll talk about the political reaction in a second, but let's just zoom in on the particular email that lots of people are talking about today.

[00:08:21] Speaker 3: The one about public assets, though, is significant. That was where a policy adviser is writing to Gordon Brown, who was then the prime minister, talking about potentially selling off government assets. And Mandelstam was copied into that. Mandelstam forwarded that email to Epstein. Epstein then asks about what these assets are. What are the saleable assets that the UK government wants to offload? And there is a response. It seems to be from Mandelstam, although the email address is redacted, saying land property, I guess. Why does this matter? Well, partly because Jeffrey Epstein was a big figure on Wall Street. He was a very wealthy financier, and he may, Adam, have been able to enrich himself with the benefit of that sort of confidential information.

[00:09:09] Speaker 1: And Joe, there's another bit of political history that's emerged through these documents today, which is the coalition negotiations after the 2010 election. And not the conservative Lib Dem coalition government negotiations, but the Labour version of those negotiations, which Peter Mandelstam was involved in, too, and was keeping Jeffrey Epstein up to date with, according to these emails.

[00:09:29] Speaker 3: Exactly, Adam. That was a time where there were many senior cabinet ministers, Labour cabinet ministers, who said, look, we need to... We've had our go. We've had our 13 years. Let's give someone else a chance. But there were others in a cabinet who thought they should try and form either a coalition with the Lib Dems or a minority administration. That always sounded pretty tricky. What these emails show is seemingly a pretty constant contact between Epstein and Mandelstam. Mandelstam updating Epstein about those negotiations, talking about, and the financier seemingly suggesting sort of negotiating tactics for Lord Mandelstam. Timing is all, is one of Mandelstam's responses. And he also seems to reveal to Epstein that Gordon Brown was having, quote, secret talks with Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader in the Foreign Office. There is also a point where Mandelstam seems to email Epstein and say, finally got him to go today. I finally got Gordon Brown to agree to resign as prime minister, tender his resignation to the then Queen. And later that day, Gordon Brown did announce he would stand down as Labour leader and facilitate further coalition negotiations. Now, they were ongoing the next day, too. But it just seems astonishing that at such a moment of drama of political significance, Peter Mandelstam wasn't just finding the time to let Jeffrey Epstein know about this, but that he was going into so much detail.

[00:11:16] Speaker 1: And also another example of just how informal slash intimate some people's communications appear to have been with Jeffrey Epstein. Absolutely. There's an email that appears to be from Lord Mandelstam on election day in 2010 saying, we're praying for a hung parliament, alternatively, a well-hung young man.

[00:11:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, you get a sense, Adam, of the men's relationship there in the last few hours, maybe the last day or so. There are some emails that seem less noteworthy in terms of headlines, but give a sense of a more lewd relationship between the two men, certainly in terms of the language they're using in their one-to-one contact.

[00:11:56] Speaker 1: Right, Daniela, let's switch on to the royal track then. So lots of focus on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor over the weekend and how he emerges from these documents. Seems to me the focus today is much more on his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

[00:12:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, too. I think the overriding thing with it in terms of the royal family is that all of these emails and messages and the exchanges with Epstein really do just emphasise the depths of the relationship between Sarah Ferguson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein. There is a informality, a closeness in the way they refer to each other. I mean, if you just look at what Sarah Ferguson was emailing Jeffrey Epstein, just to give a little flavour, it's things like, Thank you, Jeffrey, for being the brother I've always wished for. You are a legend. I really don't have the words to describe my love, gratitude for your generosity and kindness. I am at your service. Just marry me. Some of the new stuff emerging today has been, though, about where the cracks began to show in 2011 in her relationship with Epstein, where she writes a slightly strange message to him, which we hadn't been aware of, talking about him having a baby and congratulating him, where she says, you know, congratulations on you having a baby. I didn't even know you were having a baby, but it's so crystal clear to me that you were only friends with me to get to Andrew. And that really hurt me deeply more than you will know. So, I mean, you can see the sort of gushing, fawning nature of her messages to him. There's also some really uncomfortable stuff where she sort of jokes about her daughter's sex life, usually sex life in the messages to him. She asks him for money for rent. So it's quite brazen in its approach. But what also struck me in reading all the exchanges between Epstein and Andrew Manbat in Windsor and Sarah Ferguson is that Epstein has the power. He is a power player here. They are offering things, you know, do you want to come to Buckingham Palace? What about Windsor Castle? And he just said, yeah, gives them a date and a time and goes for it. He is the one in charge of this relationship. And that is what has particularly struck me about the email exchanges.

[00:13:56] Speaker 1: And things like, oh, do you want to come to Prince then Prince Andrew's 50th birthday party and then having to follow up to see if he actually wants to come to the party? So almost like just checking in with him. Are you coming? Is the insinuation there?

[00:14:08] Speaker 2: They're sort of, you know, craving his attention and yearning for his friendship. That seems to be the message on a on a number of those exchanges.

[00:14:14] Speaker 1: And have we had a response from Andrew Manbat in Windsor and also the royal family? Because, of course, we have to basically treat them as separate institutions now, even though they're still related.

[00:14:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing from either of them today. So Andrew Manbat in Windsor has not said anything, but we have seen him today. I mean, maybe surprising to some. We have seen pictures of him on horseback, riding through Windsor Great Park on the Windsor Estate. And there's also a quite amazing image of him driving down the long walk, the great long road that goes up to Windsor Castle. For anyone that knows Windsor, driving down there, waving at passersby as people are walking their dogs, pushing their kids in buggies. So, I mean, there's no sense of him hiding away or showing any obvious signs of public embarrassment today.

[00:14:53] Speaker 1: Something he's been criticised for before, for example, pushing himself to the front of the photo op outside the church.

[00:14:58] Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. So no sign yet again. But just from the palace, Buckingham Palace, it's a really tricky one for them. They have not said anything publicly at all today. But I've spoke to a number of people at the palace who've... The first interesting thing, I suppose, is that they have said that they are not getting any kind of early warning that these files are dropping. They don't know the detail of what's in them. They're not getting a heads up in any way. So they are learning a lot about stuff at the same time as the rest of us. But it has put pressure on him to perhaps, Andrew, to start giving evidence to any investigations, talk to US authorities on that front. A source at the palace has said to me today in terms of Andrew giving testimony that that is now a matter for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his conscience.

[00:15:41] Speaker 1: Which is a sort of nudge towards saying that he should.

[00:15:44] Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I think they are very much in the same room as Keir Starmer was, which is you need to be victim centred here. You need to think about who has suffered. Anybody who knows anything should come forward. And, you know, for a palace source to sort of talk about Andrew's conscience like that, it's very clear the direction of travel that they would like.

[00:16:02] Speaker 1: And Joe, in terms of the reaction to this at Westminster, we're recording this episode of Newscast at twenty to seven on Monday evening at about five o'clock. There was a statement in the House of Commons from Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, who also kind of runs the cabinet office. And it seemed to me, Joe, that a lot of what Darren Jones was saying there was that the government's response to this isn't necessarily the substance of what was in the emails or the documents that were released. It's about actually how does the House of Lords respond when somebody who's a member of the House of Lords is accused of wrongdoing?

[00:16:34] Speaker 3: Absolutely. We're in this strange situation where the prime minister's advisers are basically saying, look, he can't get rid of Lord Mandelson's peerage. He can't chuck him out of the House of Lords, even though Mandelson is on a leave of absence. The government wants to change the system around holding peers to account for their behaviour. But there was certainly pressure earlier in the Commons when Keir Starmer was speaking, although he was speaking about something different. He was appearing to update MPs on his trip to China. And both the leaders of the SNP and the Lib Dems tried towards the end of their their contributions to ask about Lord Mandelson, Ed Davey of the Lib Dems, saying, will the PM back a simple piece of legislation to strip Mandelson of his peerage? Now, Keir Starmer didn't answer on that particular topic. He just answered on what Davey said on China. And the SNP leader, Stephen Flynn, does he agree with myself that Peter Mandelson should be subject to a police investigation for potential criminality whilst in public office? Emily Thornberry, Labour MP, seen Labour MP, says something not dissimilar.

[00:17:47] Speaker 6: These files seem to show that Peter Mandelson was given £50,000 by a notorious paedophile. And a few years later, he sent on market sensitive information to Epstein, who worked for JP Morgan, about market bailouts, the prime minister's resignation, telling them that they should mildly threaten the chancellor of the Exchequer and then told him about matters of national security. Surely this is not a matter of whether Peter Mandelson be in the House of Lords. This is a matter of whether the police should be involved.

[00:18:25] Speaker 7: The honourable lady is right that each individual issue is wholly unacceptable and cumulatively it is also unacceptable. The undeclared exchange of funds, the passing on of government information, let alone the fact that those exchanges were to a convicted paedophile are wholly unconscionable. And the House will know that if any of those activities were to take place today, ministers would be swiftly relieved of their duties and could be, via the recall petitions available to the House, removed from their constituency too. As to the matter of criminal investigations, of course, that is a matter for the prosecution services and the police. And the investigation into the released documents from the cabinet secretary to the prime minister, as I've informed the House, is currently underway.

[00:19:13] Speaker 3: One part of the government's response, which is certainly victim centred and pretty dismissive about Lord Mandelson, they're also trying to distance themselves and say ultimately he now needs to account for his actions and his conduct. Now, Keir Starmer did not know everything we know now about the nature of that relationship. Of course, there was no information way back then about what seems to be a financial link and also seemingly leaking details from the UK government in the Gordon Brown years. Yet that decision that Keir Starmer made, which at the time was a bit controversial, now looks like a pretty serious error. And the endless headlines it's already prompted could arguably damage his government and might continue to do so in the future. One other thing is worth pointing out, Adam, we have gone to Lord Mandelson today to try and get a response to these latest revelations about the leaks to Epstein of internal government communications, but also opposition parties asking the police to investigate. He's not as yet responded to any of that. He has previously questioned the authenticity of some of these documents. And of course, before that, he has apologised for his relationship. He said he regrets ever knowing Epstein and also has apologised unequivocally to the girls and women who were impacted by that abuse.

[00:20:49] Speaker 1: And actually, Joe, just in terms of how Lord Mandelson is responding to this, this takes us back to the start of our conversation about just how we manage this avalanche of information, which is presumably you and your colleagues at Westminster are having to email, message him every couple of hours with a new thing to get him to respond to. And while we're waiting for that, all we have is his response from the weekend about the allegations that he'd received money. So it's a bit of a fallback on that.

[00:21:17] Speaker 3: It is. And of course, my job means I'm often contacting people, sometimes in the public eye, about controversial stories. The stuff I do often requires BBC lawyers to look at our copy and our work and ensure we are being balanced and legally sound. And giving people who are in the centre of stories an opportunity to put their response and also to give them time to understand what allegations are and maybe to look back at any records that might help them respond to. Now, Lord Mandelson is somebody who's been in the public eye and in controversies in public eye for a number of decades. And he's somebody who's used to dealing with the media. But we certainly have not been sending endless messages to him, partly because I think it's unfair to send an avalanche of messages. We need to be professional and focus on what the key allegations are and what he might be able to respond on. Because if there are 6,000 documents relating to him, I mean, we could potentially send him 6,000 messages. And that I don't think would be fair or appropriate.

[00:22:34] Speaker 1: And also then, Daniela, there's now, because it's 2026 and it's social media and the Internet, there's stuff you can see on your social media feed, which is purporting to be from these files, which is not real. Or it's people adding two and two together and getting 58.

[00:22:48] Speaker 2: Yeah. Welcome to AI-generated material as part of this story. You know, you have to be really careful with what you're doing and with the documents that you're looking at. But just touching on what Joe's just said about the sensitivities in this and how you then put these allegations to people, how you talk to them about what's happening. I mean, it's a difficult area around this in many ways. And the one thing that has struck me about the royal family is that family element of this, which is a really difficult area because, you know, none of us want to diminish what has gone on here and how Epstein has behaved and in any way take away from that at all. But I think there is an element from the royals that this is also a family matter as well as a public one. And they are trying to navigate that element, whether that is looking after Beatrice and Eugenie or in terms of, you know, of the former prince. You know, he is a younger brother of the king. He is the uncle to a future king. And they do feel a sense of responsibility. I know that from from people I've spoken to at the palaces. And they feel a duty of care as well. Now, that might really annoy people, because when you look at what the allegations are here and how he seems to have behaved. We just want an answer from you. Yeah, it's just hard. It's you know, that is quite difficult to to sort of deal with. But it's definitely, definitely a factor in this as well. There is a personal as well as a public element.

[00:24:06] Speaker 1: And I suppose some newscasters might say, oh, why have you not talked about the victims and survivors more in this episode? But my answer to that would be, well, the the stories that are in front of us today are the stories that we've just been talking about in the last half an hour. And there will be other days where the story is very much driven by what the survivors and the victims are saying. And then I suppose other people might say, why are you spending so much time talking about this? But I think all the things we've just talked about, there's a real public interest in. We should just say before you go, Daniela, have you heard back from from Sarah Ferguson talking about responses?

[00:24:39] Speaker 2: No, we haven't. No responses from Sarah Ferguson. No responses from Andrew Manbatten, Windsor and no official comments from Buckingham Palace.

[00:24:45] Speaker 1: Daniela, thank you very much. Thanks, Adam. And Joe, in your unofficial role as Gorton and Denton by-election correspondent as well, can you bring us up to date? We now have the Tory candidate for who's going to fight that by-election. We certainly do, Adam.

[00:24:58] Speaker 3: I don't have her name to hand. I do.

[00:25:00] Speaker 1: It's Charlotte Cadden.

[00:25:01] Speaker 3: Charlotte Cadden. Now, the Tories didn't get more than 10% at the last general election, but they are another contender. And tomorrow, I think, is the deadline for nomination. So tomorrow we'll have the full slate, Adam.

[00:25:16] Speaker 1: And she's a former police detective who served in the Met and Greater Manchester forces.

[00:25:21] Speaker 3: So we've got a former police detective, a plumber. We have a Labour's candidate, I think, is somebody who's had sort of stakeholder engagement at the top of her CV. So a pretty varied group of people.

[00:25:35] Speaker 1: Sounds like a series of The Traitors. No comment on any of the candidates and their behaviour. Joe, thank you very much. Thanks, Adam.