Starmer orders Mandelson–Epstein contacts review (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Sir Keir Starmer says Lord Mandelson should no longer sit in Parliament following further revelations about his links to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Downing Street said this morning the Prime Minister believes the man he named as his US ambassador just a year ago should no longer be a member of the Lords or use the title, although he doesn't have the power to remove him. Number 10 has asked Cabinet Secretary Sir Chris Wormald to conduct an urgent review of all available information regarding his contacts with Epstein during his period as a government minister. The documents suggest Epstein paid Mandelson $75,000 in three separate transactions in 2003 and 2004 and then later in 2009 while business secretary and he was lobbying at that time on behalf of Epstein and his clients. There are reports that he forwarded on sensitive government emails around the time of the financial crisis. Mr Mandelson says he has no record of these payments and believes the documents are false. Lauren Moss reports.

[00:01:00] Speaker 2: Personal pictures in his pants. These images of Lord Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, is among 180,000 photographs contained in the latest and final release of the Epstein files.

[00:01:13] Speaker 3: I'd like to have that accent. My mother would be proud.

[00:01:16] Speaker 2: Lord Mandelson resigned from his role as UK ambassador to the US last year and after this and fresh claims that $75,000 was sent to him by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he has quit the Labour party. In a statement, Lord Mandelson has said, I have no record and no recollection of receiving these sums and do not know if the documents are authentic. I can clearly say, though, I regret ever having known Epstein. Labour's confirmed he was facing disciplinary action and Sakhiya Starmer has now said Lord Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords and has instructed an urgent review into all contact between him and Jeffrey Epstein. The opposition says there are questions to answer.

[00:02:00] Speaker 4: All of these allegations that have come out to show that he is someone who is not fit for public office, I think there is a lot that needs to be looked into, including investigating how he ever came to be appointed and all levers which can be pulled in order to remove him from public office should be looked into.

[00:02:19] Speaker 2: Another photograph causing further embarrassment is of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York seen here crouching on all fours above an unidentified woman in what's believed to be Epstein's New York home. There's been no comment from the former prince about this or allegations from a woman who says she was sent to have sex with him here at his home royal lodge. It's the first time such claims have been made about encounters taking place at a royal residence. Up until this weekend, the late Virginia Geoffrey was the only victim who said she had been trafficked by Epstein to sleep with the king's brother. He strenuously denied this and any wrongdoing. The prime minister's joint calls for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence about what he knew in the States.

[00:03:03] Speaker 1: Well, let's go live to Westminster and speak to our political correspondent, Nick Eardley, who's with us. It's now being suggested, Nick, that he forwarded internal government emails to Epstein. What would be the implication of that? Is that gross misconduct in office worthy of a criminal inquiry?

[00:03:18] Speaker 5: Certainly what some are suggesting, Christian, it certainly takes this whole story into a different place as well, because for months, really, the key accusation levelled at Lord Mandelson was that he'd been a bit daft in staying in touch with Geoffrey Epstein after he'd been convicted and that was a serious misjudgment, but that ultimately that was the story. You have all these other elements which have been coming out over the past 24, 48 hours, the suggestions in these documents that money may have been transferred to Lord Mandelson, the suggestion today that sensitive government information was being shared on email from Peter Mandelson to Geoffrey Epstein as well. All of these suggestions are really serious and just ask a lot more questions of Lord Mandelson's conduct. Now, I should say we've been putting these points to him. He's not replied to all of them, but this does seem to be a pretty remarkable turn of events and one which has left Number 10 scrambling to say, well, we get it, we get why there's so much anger over this and we want Lord Mandelson to remove himself from the House of Lords. The fact that Number 10 is now saying that a man who a few months ago was their political appointee in Washington, one of the top jobs in the Foreign and Diplomatic Service, they're now saying that person should be thrown out of the House of Lords, it's a pretty big deal.

[00:04:50] Speaker 1: So are there now questions then of the Prime Minister?

[00:04:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think inevitably there will be. The argument we always heard from Lord Mandelson and his allies was that he'd been completely transparent with Number 10 about what relationships he'd had with Jeffrey Epstein. We'd always thought until this latest tranche of information was released that that was about when he stayed in touch with Mr. Epstein rather than what he had shared with Mr. Epstein. So we've not heard Lord Mandelson repeat that claim in the past 48 hours, but it'll be interesting to see if and when he does break his cover in a bit more of a detailed way, whether he repeats that claim that he shared everything with Number 10. Number 10 have put in place this inquiry in the Cabinet Office to look into what contact there was between Lord Mandelson when he was a government minister and Jeffrey Epstein, whether that was market sensitive, whether it potentially financially could have benefited Mr. Epstein. A really big inquiry there for the Cabinet Office to undertake. All of this points back to just a really remarkable set of circumstances, Christian, which has left Lord Mandelson's career in complete tatters and huge questions still being asked about his conduct. Remember, there are so many documents here that the BBC and I'm sure other media organisations, a lot of people are going through those documents still trying to find out what other references there might be. So this story may have some way to go yet.

[00:06:22] Speaker 1: Indeed so. Nick, for the moment, thank you very much. Well, let's take a look at where that inquiry might go. It is alleged, as I say, that Lord Mandelson forwarded government emails that set out confidential government policy. Remember, at the time, one of Epstein's clients was Jamie Dimon, head of US Bank JP Morgan. Lord Mandelson, who was business secretary at the time, advised Mr. Epstein that Dimon should mildly threaten the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, about a tax on bankers bonuses that had been proposed. Dan Needle is founder of the think tank Tax Policy Associates and a member of the Labour Party. He'd been looking through the files and came across the leaked government emails. There are two emails, Dan, that you've put forward, one from June, one from August. What do they tell us? What were the emails and how do they appertain to the banking sector?

[00:07:10] Speaker 6: So as someone said earlier, there's a suggestion Peter Mandelson forwarded emails. Unless there's been an astonishing forgery, it's clear that in June 2009, Peter Mandelson forwarded to Jeffrey Epstein an email about ways of the UK improving its economic position. One of the suggested ways was that the UK could sell some state assets, and Peter Mandelson forwarded that within two hours to Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was clearly very interested and asked what kind of assets, and Peter Mandelson responded.

[00:07:41] Speaker 1: So before we talk about the second email, why would the banks be particularly interested in that?

[00:07:47] Speaker 6: Well, if the UK is selling assets, then someone's buying them. And Mr. Epstein's clients would be very interested in that. So it's market sensitive information? I don't know about market sensitive in a technical sense, but it's confidential information. And it should have been obvious to Peter Mandelson that Epstein had a commercial interest. But if it wasn't obvious at the start, it was very obvious when Epstein responded with a question about what kind of assets they were.

[00:08:13] Speaker 1: And the second email?

[00:08:16] Speaker 6: The second email, the name of the sender is redacted. So we cannot be certain it was Peter Mandelson. But all the surrounding circumstances, the characteristics of the device used to forward it, make it reasonably clear that it was Mr. Mandelson. And that was a perhaps even more sensitive email, because it was around arrangements for strengthening the financial markets, which Mr. Epstein's Wall Street clients would have been highly interested in. Actually, there's two further emails, which I can't refer to more specifically at this moment, but I hope to publish later, which again are clearly Mr. Mandelson forwarding government emails to Jeffrey Epstein. So three certain in total, one probable.

[00:08:54] Speaker 1: Can we just pin down why you think they have come from Peter Mandelson? You say in your blog there are two things that are pertinent. One is that someone who forwarded them on used a BlackBerry in each case. So it's come from a BlackBerry device. And you say that the second email was forwarded on just four seconds after it had landed with one of the direct recipients, bounced it straight on. So what does that tell you in terms of your forensic investigation?

[00:09:21] Speaker 6: Well, yes, the June email was clearly from Mandelson because his name's on it. The August email doesn't have his name on it, but we have the two seconds to forward it on. We have the BlackBerry redaction of his name is the exact same size as the redaction over Peter Mandelson's name. And the same kind of BlackBerry device was used with the same automatic signature and with the same erroneous time setting, ignoring British summertime. Most people, most people's phones switched to British summertime for some reason Peter Mandelson's didn't. And you can see that hallmark on both the emails.

[00:09:53] Speaker 1: Right. So what does it amount to? Let me put the same question I put to Nick. Is it lobbying on their behalf? Is it a breach of cabinet responsibility? Is it criminal?

[00:10:02] Speaker 6: Well, these emails aren't lobbying, I don't think, but they're enabling Epstein to lobbying. They're passing sensitive government information to someone whose clients are on the other side of the financial markets from government. And it's part of a pattern. We see them several months later, Mr. Mandelson advising JPMorgan through Epstein how to lobby the British government and stop attacks the government was planning. So it looks highly improper. Is it criminal? Could it be misconducting in public office, which is a criminal offence? That is not my area of expertise. I don't want to give a definitive view, but I will say I think someone who does have expertise, someone in the Crown Prosecution Service, should be looking at this very seriously.

[00:10:48] Speaker 1: Right. And then there is the issue of the money, these payments that were made to Peter Mandelson, which he says he has no recollection of, which is very odd. Either he did receive them or he didn't. I think people who received that amount of money would remember. But obviously at the time, he is a senior cabinet minister, almost serving as the deputy prime minister, if I recall, back at that time, with a close association to vested interests. How does that sit, do you think, with expected standards of ministerial conduct?

[00:11:20] Speaker 6: Well, yes, there's three payments of $25,000 in 2003, 2004, at a time when Mandelson was really very senior within government. The bank statements in the Epstein files, I'm very familiar with back statements. They certainly look like genuine bank statements, unless there was some extraordinary operation to frame Peter Mandelson. These are real. And his denials are highly unpersuasive. As you say, it's extraordinary.

[00:11:47] Speaker 1: Thank you very much indeed for that. Much appreciated. Well, from tech titans to Wall Street financiers, ministers and royal families, the latest trove of documents released by the Justice Department is a who's who of powerful establishment figures. All deny having anything to do with Epstein's sexual abuse of young girls and women. But what about the women? Where did they come from? How did they appear in Epstein's inner circle? Some of that we know details about. But in the correspondence with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, which includes an invite to Buckingham Palace, Epstein offers to introduce the then prince to a beautiful 26-year-old Russian woman. Draft emails on Epstein's computer suggest Bill Gates caught an STD from Russian girls. Again, denied. It raises concerns that there were a number of Russian women in this circle who may or may not have had contact with Russian intelligence, all of it speculation. But then who was vetting the invited guests? The Daily Mail this weekend quoting intelligence sources say Jeffrey Epstein was running the world's largest honey trap operation on behalf of the KGB, or as it became, the FSB. Let's speak then to Craig Unger. He's journalist and author of American Compromat. Thank you very much for being with us. Let's just remove the Russian element from this for a second. But in terms of the honey trap that Jeffrey Epstein was running here, we have a picture of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on all fours. We have a picture of Peter Mandelson in his underpants. Presumably these pictures and many pictures like them were taken without their knowledge.

[00:13:19] Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, it's been widely reported. I've reported in my books that Epstein had videotapes going in several of his residences. When the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department began investigating, they reportedly acquired hundreds and hundreds of videotapes. If you look at what's been released by the Justice Department, that's the most obvious thing that's missing. We want to know, was Epstein using these for extortion purposes? And we certainly heard reports about him using that with Bill Gates and with Leon Black, the billionaire owner of Apollo Global Management.

[00:14:08] Speaker 1: Turning to the Russians, what do we know about the tactics of the SFB and how they used young beautiful women in the past? Is it fanciful? Is it a hypothesis to think that here is a man with access to an extraordinary amount of influential people, and if they could get women into that circle, they might gain important information?

[00:14:30] Speaker 3: It's not just hypothetical. The Russians have been using this for years, the Soviets before them. And there were reports that when Donald Trump first visited Russia in 1987, that there were videotapes in his room. A lot of this cannot be corroborated or has not been corroborated yet, but it's a tried and true method used by the KGB and its successors. And it clearly appears that Epstein was doing the same thing. The big question is, where are the videotapes and who was on them? So we don't know where these tapes are. The investigators don't have them. We don't know, I mean, I wouldn't say the investigators don't have them. The Justice Department has released about three million pages, but there are another three million they have not released, and they certainly have not been saying anything really about the videotapes. Initially, the investigation began around 2004, 2005 in Palm Beach County, Florida, where Epstein lived. And the Palm Beach Sheriff's Department, I was told by someone working there, had 478 videotapes from Epstein's home there in Palm Beach County. And of course, he had homes in his island, in the Virgin Islands, in his estate in New Mexico, and his huge townhouse in Manhattan. What do we know of Epstein's links to the Russians? Well, he certainly had ties, and there were several Russian women working for them. There was a young woman named Masha Zhukova, who did publicity for him. There was another woman named Svetlana Posadieva, who worked with him and introduced him to a lot of the scientists, computer scientists at MIT and Harvard. And one thing I've been pursuing, again, there are unanswered questions in this regard, but Vladimir Putin has long said that whoever controls artificial intelligence controls the world. And here you have two women who were close to Epstein and provided entree to some of the top people in Silicon Valley.

[00:16:56] Speaker 1: And then we shouldn't forget, of course, Ghislaine Maxwell and the links that her father had to the Kremlin.

[00:17:02] Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, in many ways, I regard her late father, Robert Maxwell, had very important ties to the KGB. He also had key ties to Israeli intelligence. In the end, I suspect Maxwell was really working for himself and almost using those intelligence agencies to his own end. It's also curious in many ways, I think, that Maxwell, Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein both had very mysterious deaths that were said to be suicides, but there were a lot of unanswered questions that suggested it may have been at the hands of intelligence services.

[00:17:45] Speaker 1: Extraordinary. So murky. Craig Unger, thank you very much indeed for your thoughts. Let's take a short break. We'll get into some of that in the context of the Royal Family very shortly, but around the world and across the UK, you're watching BBC News.