Epstein Email Trove Details Maxwell Secrets, Key Role

A cache of more than 16,000 emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s private Yahoo account paints a complex, and in many instances chilling portrait of a man whose enigmatic nature has only deepened since his death. The emails reveal Epstein’s unfiltered worries, odd sense of humor, and callousness toward the coterie of young women, many of them teenagers, who entered his world. The emails do the impossible: They bring Epstein back to life. Bloomberg's Ava Benny Morrison reports.

he ouster of the UK’s ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, raises fresh questions about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who people familiar with the matter said was instrumental in the envoy’s appointment and spent recent days defending his position.

Starmer fired Mandelson on Thursday, after just seven months in post, following revelations about the extent of the envoy’s past ties to late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, including a trove of more than 100 emails between the two men revealed by Bloomberg. Mandelson didn’t respond to questions from Bloomberg.

While the appointment of Mandelson was ultimately Starmer’s decision, McSweeney personally pushed for it despite the reputational risks surrounding his known links to the notorious pedophile, people familiar with the decision said. The Downing Street chief of staff then encouraged colleagues earlier this week to improve their defense of Mandelson, despite advice to Starmer from other No. 10 officials that the envoy should be sacked, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to disclose sensitive government discussions.

A person close to McSweeney denied he tried to resist Mandelson’s departure. He was out of the office in a different country on Tuesday and most of Wednesday, the person added. A No. 10 official said it would be wrong to attribute the decision to appoint Mandelson to a single adviser. After new details about the Epstein-Mandelson relationship emerged, there was a process involved in the decision to remove him, and McSweeney did not resist that, they said.

Nevertheless, the chief of staff’s close relationship with the ousted envoy is well-known, and the pair reportedly have lunch together regularly, discuss government decisions, and spend time together at McSweeney’s home in Scotland. One colleague described Mandelson as McSweeney’s mentor.

To be sure, Mandelson was already influential in Starmer’s team before he came to power in a landslide win in July 2024. As Labour crept up the polls in the run-up to that election, Mandelson began to informally offer advice to Starmer’s team, paving the way for his return.

Now, the nature of Mandelson’s departure plunges Starmer’s administration further into turmoil less than a week after Angela Rayner was forced to resign for underpaying taxes on a housing transaction. When the premier chose to appoint Mandelson in February, his links to Epstein, and the fact he’d kept up the association after the pedophile’s first conviction, as already a matter of public record.

Mandelson stayed in Epstein’s home while he was in prison, a fact Starmer faced questions about in 2024 as Labour leader, because Mandelson was one of the party’s peers in the House of Lords.

Moreover, the Labour veteran of the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had been embroiled in several controversies during their administrations, and resigned from ministerial roles twice.

Starmer himself had defended Mandelson’s position in the House of Commons on Wednesday, saying the envoy had his confidence. But that view changed overnight with the publication of Bloomberg’s story.

In one of the missives to Epstein from Mandelson, sent the day before Epstein reported to a Florida jail in June 2008 to begin serving time for soliciting sex from a minor, Mandelson wrote: “I think the world of you” and offered to discuss the financier’s case with his contacts.

UK officials said the emails — particularly Mandelson’s suggestion that Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged — prompted Starmer to re-evaluate. “

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