Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Mister Speakers, the relationship between the US and the UK
Speaker 2: is one of our foremost relationships, and I have confidence
Speaker 2: in the ambassador in the role that he is doing.
Speaker 3: That was Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday, with Kirs Starmer
Speaker 3: defending Peter Mandelssohn, the UK's ambassador to the US. By Thursday,
Speaker 3: we heard this from the Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doherty.
Speaker 4: The emails show mister Speaker that the depth and extent
Speaker 4: of Lord Mallison's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different
Speaker 4: from that known at the time of his appointment.
Speaker 3: Well, those emails published by Bloomberg are deeply revealing of
Speaker 3: Mandelsohn's relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Today, we're bringing
Speaker 3: you the inside story of that scoop and asking what
Speaker 3: it means for Kirs Starmer and the labor government. Hello,
Speaker 3: you're listening to a special episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak
Speaker 3: you at podcast. I'm Caroline and.
Speaker 1: I'm Stephen Carroll. Now, this story starts with some eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand emails from Jeffrey Epstein's personal Yahoo account, which were
Speaker 1: seen by Bloomberg, including many exchanges with Peter Mandelsson, who
Speaker 1: was at the time the EU's Trade Commissioner and was
Speaker 1: until yesterday, the UK's ambassador to the United States. The
Speaker 1: messages show a close personal relationship with the disgraced financier
Speaker 1: and exchanges at key moments in the months before he
Speaker 1: was imprisoned in mid two thousand and eight. They provoked
Speaker 1: a chain of events which led to Mandlson's removal from
Speaker 1: his position at a key moment just days from Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's visit to the UK.
Speaker 3: Well, if you recall, Stephen Peter Mandleson was appointed as
Speaker 3: Britain's ambassador to Washington in February. His ties to Epstein
Speaker 3: were known then, but Lord Mandleson had previously denied that
Speaker 3: they were extensive. However, the emails uncovered by Bloomberg reveal
Speaker 3: something different, and that the day before Jeffrey Epstein reported
Speaker 3: to a Florida jail this is in June two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, to begin serving time for soliciting sex from
Speaker 3: a minor. He received an outraged message from Peter Mandelsson
Speaker 3: which included the following quotes, I think the world of
Speaker 3: view and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.
Speaker 3: I can still barely understand it. It just could not
Speaker 3: happen in Britain. And lastly, your friends stay with you
Speaker 3: and love you. Those words and others contained in the
Speaker 3: emails mean that Kirs Starman and his advisors now face
Speaker 3: growing questions and anger about why Lord Mandelsson was chosen
Speaker 3: for this most important of diplomatic roles.
Speaker 1: Well, this story was a political bombshell in Westminster, so
Speaker 1: that we wanted to talk more about how it came about.
Speaker 1: For that were joined by our finance reporter Harry Wilson,
Speaker 1: who reported on those emails, and by our political correspondent
Speaker 1: Ellen Melligan as well. Harry, I wanted to start with
Speaker 1: you and I suppose how this story got started, and
Speaker 1: I suppose what you thought when you first saw the
Speaker 1: contents of these emails.
Speaker 2: I still remember looking at that email. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was among the first that I found, and it was
Speaker 2: really just as soon as you read it, it was
Speaker 2: just I kind of thought, if you've been a Hollywood
Speaker 2: scriptwriter imagining like what someone might say inadvisedly to a
Speaker 2: convicted pedophile just before they go to jail, I don't
Speaker 2: think you'd have come up with words quite as dramatic
Speaker 2: as what Lord Manderson had sent. And it was just
Speaker 2: I think the overwhelming sense of the closeness between the
Speaker 2: two of them, that you know, this was more than
Speaker 2: just an association as I think Lord Manderson has described
Speaker 2: it in recent days and weeks. This was a seemed
Speaker 2: like a deeply personal friendship the two of them had.
Speaker 3: What were the sentences and was that stood out for you?
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a huge volume of emails that
Speaker 3: you went through. You also sent a long request for
Speaker 3: comment to Peter Mandelson regarding this cash of emails and
Speaker 3: what the contents of it was what stood out to
Speaker 3: you also as you kind of waded through them all.
Speaker 2: There's a whole bunch of us who've been working on this,
Speaker 2: and I think, to be honest, amongst all of us,
Speaker 2: just as we went through the emails, we got this
Speaker 2: kind of sense of I guess how you might describe
Speaker 2: it as some kind of quasied lobbying campaign that Lord
Speaker 2: Anderson had been on for Epstein in the months before
Speaker 2: he went to jail. It was it's kind of like
Speaker 2: you sort of imagine, you know, if you had a
Speaker 2: friend in peril and he's there sort of almost every week,
Speaker 2: checking in with Epstein, making sure he's okay, trying to
Speaker 2: kind of find ways of putting potentially in touch with
Speaker 2: people who might be able to help him. It's more
Speaker 2: than just I guess, a sense of being a moral support.
Speaker 2: It's a sense that there's an active level of support there,
Speaker 2: and I think that's what really kind of, I guess
Speaker 2: surprised us. And then when you see what he actually
Speaker 2: sends just the day before Epstein actually goes to it's
Speaker 2: really the culmination of a whole months long, I guess
Speaker 2: even years long thing in which Mandelsson has been all
Speaker 2: the way through this kind of support for Epstein to
Speaker 2: an extraordinary degree.
Speaker 1: Of course, that expression, I think the world of view
Speaker 1: in that email, as you say, the day before Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein went to jail, certainly stands out. Talk to us
Speaker 1: about the exchanges that you and the team had with
Speaker 1: Peter Mandleson before this story was published.
Speaker 2: So the first he learned of our story would have
Speaker 2: been on Monday afternoon. We sent her an email to
Speaker 2: him at three thirty six in the afternoon on Monday.
Speaker 2: It was a very long email. It was nearly two
Speaker 2: thousand words long. It contained all the emails that we
Speaker 2: were planning to report in full, with the dates of
Speaker 2: when they were sent. We explained to him which email
Speaker 2: account the emails have been sent from and two and
Speaker 2: we then listed about twenty questions to him, just setting
Speaker 2: out all the sort of different things that we felt
Speaker 2: the emails raised as issues with him and asking him
Speaker 2: for comment. And at that point we had planned, you
Speaker 2: know it, there was a lot of stuff there, and
Speaker 2: in fairness to him, we felt that he should have
Speaker 2: a decent amount of times respond so we gave him
Speaker 2: til essentially the end of the week to come back
Speaker 2: to us. But then I guess events kind of moved
Speaker 2: pretty fast. You had the US Congressional Committee come out
Speaker 2: later that day with the birthday book, and in there
Speaker 2: there was this ten page I guess, how would you
Speaker 2: describe it, like a glowing tribute that Mandelson gave to
Speaker 2: Epstein in two thousand and three for this extraordinary birthday book,
Speaker 2: And that really sort of then from there the sort
Speaker 2: of pressure started growing on Manderson, and I think at
Speaker 2: that point we were starting to think to ourselves, you know,
Speaker 2: we're being overtaken by events here, and particularly then on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: there was this growing chorus I think around Lord Mandelsson
Speaker 2: in his role as ambassador was it viable. So we
Speaker 2: decided then to bring forward actually our deadline for his
Speaker 2: response to the next day, and then Wednesday morning was
Speaker 2: suddenly out of the blue came this interview that Lord
Speaker 2: Mandelsson gave to The Sun in which he started talking about,
Speaker 2: obviously the birthday book, saying how much he deeply regretted
Speaker 2: his association with Epstein. But then, and obviously to us,
Speaker 2: this really stood out when he started saying hinting at
Speaker 2: further revelations to come, which to our minds certainly suggested
Speaker 2: that he was obviously aware of what we'd sent. And
Speaker 2: it was that point we decided to directly go to
Speaker 2: him on WhatsApp because at this point we still have
Speaker 2: not received any recognition from him that he'd received anything
Speaker 2: that we'd sent to him, and so we messaged him
Speaker 2: and then it I guess that sort of things that
Speaker 2: sort of started spiraling really from there, and we ended
Speaker 2: up obviously publishing later that day.
Speaker 3: At this point, I'd like to bring in our political correspondent,
Speaker 3: Ellen Milligan to think about this revelation. I mean, these
Speaker 3: were letters and support this relationship between Mandelssohn and Epstein
Speaker 3: around the time of his conviction for soliciting sex from
Speaker 3: a minor. This is the issue for Kirs Starmer, now,
Speaker 3: isn't it?
Speaker 2: Ellen?
Speaker 3: How damaging do you think this is for the Prime
Speaker 3: Minister around his judgment. That's the question that politicians and
Speaker 3: others in the country are seeming to put to the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's deeply damaging. And the Prime Minister has suffered
Speaker 5: other resignations during his one or so years in office,
Speaker 5: including his Deputy Prime Minister over a tax issue recently,
Speaker 5: but the sacking of Peter Mandelson is uniquely humiliating because
Speaker 5: it was entirely predictable. I mean, this is a politician
Speaker 5: who had to resign twice from Tony Blair's government for
Speaker 5: his murky relationships with wealthy businessmen. He's a politician whose
Speaker 5: friendship with Epstein, including since his two thousand and eight conviction,
Speaker 5: was public knowledge. It was raised in the vetting process
Speaker 5: we report today when he was made ambassador and the
Speaker 5: Prime Minister was warned about this. He was asked about
Speaker 5: it by The Financial Times on the week of his appointment,
Speaker 5: to which Manderson told the FT to f off. All
Speaker 5: these questions have been swirling around Peter Anderson for years,
Speaker 5: and what Harry's reporting did was kind of shine new
Speaker 5: light on the depths of the relationship, but much of
Speaker 5: it was known. And though yes there are questions being
Speaker 5: raised now about the Prime Minister's judgment about his Chief
Speaker 5: of Stealth, Morgan McSweeney's judgment, who we've reported was a
Speaker 5: big advocate for Manderson getting this role, it raises questions
Speaker 5: about the vetting process and also questions about the government's
Speaker 5: own reasoning for sacking Manderson. I mean, in their statement
Speaker 5: they say that the emails that Harry publish showing new
Speaker 5: depth and extent to the relationship, in particular the Peter
Speaker 5: Anderson suggestion that Epstein's first conviction was wrong. And I
Speaker 5: was in the briefing with the Prime Minister's spokesperson yesterday
Speaker 5: and we were putting to him, you know that sounds
Speaker 5: like you were comfortable with them having a friendship as
Speaker 5: long as he thought Epstein was guilty of the crimes.
Speaker 5: But now because there's evidence that he thought he was innocent,
Speaker 5: that's the thing that's moved to the dial. There are
Speaker 5: lots of questions being raised around the judgment of the
Speaker 5: Prime Minister.
Speaker 3: Now indeed, Ellen will await you're reporting then on what
Speaker 3: does happen at that state visit. That is our political correspondent,
Speaker 3: Ellen Milligan, and in our studio, our finance reporter Harry
Speaker 3: Wilson reporting on those emails revealing that relationship between Peter
Speaker 3: Mandelson and the late Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1: And you can read more of those stories Epstein's inbox
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg website, on Bloomberg dot comen the terminal
Speaker 1: as well, and more on the story behind the story
Speaker 1: of Mandelsson's Epstein emails. You find both of those stories
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg website. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your
Speaker 1: morning brief on the stories making news from London to
Speaker 1: Wall Street and beyond.
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