A cabinet minister has described Peter Mandelson as “outstanding” despite him being sacked over his close links with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Peter Kyle, an ally of the former UK ambassador to Washington, also defended Keir Starmer’s decision to give him the job in the first place.
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Mandelson was sacked on Thursday morning following the publication of emails in which he told Epstein “your friends stay with you and love you” even as he was facing child underage sex charges in 2008.
On Sky News this morning, business secretary Kyle admitted No.10 knew Mandelson and Epstein had “a strong relationship” before Starmer made him ambassador in February.
He said: “We knew that there were risks involved, but his talent led us to believe at the time that the risk was worth it.”
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Presenter Trevor Phillips asked him: “The prime minister interrogated Lord Mandelson about the relationship with Epstein himself. This is one of the country’s leading barristers. If he couldn’t have actually got the information from Peter Mandelson before the appointment, who could? Who failed here?”
Kyle said: “There was a lot of information publicly, we knew there was a relationship, we knew the relationship continued after he had been convicted.
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“The decision was taken in the national interest to try and use the specific talents that he had, which were singular and outstanding.”
Bizarrely, the business secretary went on to claim that “we only knew what the media knew” about Mandelson’s links to Epstein, despite the Labour peer having to go through so-called “deep vetting” before getting the job.
On his way out the door to a weekend golf trip that’s set to cost American taxpayers at least $10 million, Donald Trump stopped to answer a couple questions from reporters ― and he was awfully cagey when asked about Ghislaine Maxwell.
Asked if he would pardon or commute the sentence of Maxwell, sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s onetime girlfriend, Trump sure didn’t say “no.”
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“I’m allowed to do it,” he told reporters. He then claimed that “it’s something I’ve not thought about.”
Presumably, Trump wouldn’t pardon Maxwell, who was convicted for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, unless it benefited him personally — perhaps by buying her silence or otherwise somehow distracting the country from his own past relationship with Epstein.
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Trump deflected further when pushed on the subject.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with her on Thursday in an attempt to quell a firestorm over the Trump administration’s backtracking on promises to release additional records from the Epstein investigation.
“What I do want to say is that Blanche is a great attorney,” Trump told reporters.
Then he launched into one of his classic redirects and encouraged the press not to investigate his own connection to Epstein, but everyone else’s. He proceeded to list names that may or may not be in the Epstein files and speculated about “hedge fund guys” and former President Bill Clinton going to Epstein’s island.
In the same back and forth, Trump also denied that he’d written a lewd birthday message for Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman and remarked how “enigmas never age” while wishing that “may every day be another wonderful secret.” The Wall Street Journal published the content of the note last week.
US President Donald Trump hung up on a CNN reporter during a phone call Tuesday that lasted a mere 30 seconds after the journalist questioned him about resurfaced images showing Jeffrey Epstein at Trump’s 1993 wedding to his second wife, Marla Maples.
While appearing on Erin Burnett OutFront on Tuesday, reporter Andrew Kaczynski shared details about the abrupt phone call with Trump that ended in name-calling.
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The call took place after CNN’s KFile found photos of Epstein and Trump that had not been widely reported on before. One photo showed the disgraced financier and sex offender attending Trump’s Plaza Hotel wedding to Maples.
In a separate image, Epstein was seen with Trump and his children at a Harley-Davidson Cafe that same year.
CNN also released a video of Trump and Epstein chatting with each other at a Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in New York in February 1999.
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Kaczynski told host Burnett that the call, in which he asked Trump about the images, ended with the president slamming CNN as “fake news” and hanging up after he refused to answer questions about his past connection to Epstein.
“We were not on the phone very long. I think our call was about 30 seconds or so,” Kaczynski told Burnett. “But when I asked him about the wedding photo, he said, he sort of paused for a second and then said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ before calling CNN ‘fake news’ and then hanging up on me.”
In a statement to CNN, Kaczynski said, White House communications director Steven Cheung said, “These are nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious.”
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Cheung added: “The fact is that the president kicked [Epstein] out of his club for being a ‘creep.’”
Kaczynski’s heated yet ultra-brief conversation with Trump comes after the Department of Justice and FBI released a two-page memo earlier this month, claiming their Epstein investigation determined that there was no evidence Epstein was murdered or had a “client list” of powerful figures he could potentially blackmail.
Following the memo release, Trump faced scrutiny over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files, particularly from his own base. Since then, both Republicans and Democrats have called on the president and his administration to release more information.
“I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”
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The Journal published its story on Thursday, alleging that Trump was among the people who wrote letters to Epstein as part of an album put together by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and associate, for his 50th birthday.
The letter attributed to Trump that the Journal reviewed featured “several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker,” the article states.
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the message concluded, according to the Journal.
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The newspaper added that pages from the album have been examined by Justice Department investigators in the past, while noting that it was unclear whether the letter was among the materials reviewed in the most recent probe.
Trump, who disputed the authenticity of the letter, slammed the newspaper and threatened to sue both the outlet and Murdoch over its publication.
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump wrote. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”
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The president had previously said he also tried to get the Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, to kill the story.
“Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so,” Trump said.
Tucker “was told directly by [White House press secretary] Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn’t want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway,” he added.
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Epstein died in federal prison one month after being arrested on charges of sex-trafficking minors in 2019, during Trump’s first term. While the president has tried to distance himself from Epstein, the two men had a well-documented friendship.
A recent memo by the Trump administration stating that there was no evidence to suggest he was murdered or that he held a client list to blackmail people contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi’s earlier comments that the client list was “sitting on [her] desk” for review under a directive from Trump.
Elon Musk is taking his feud with President Donald Trump a step further, posting on X that the reason the Jeffrey Epstein files haven’t been released is because Trump is in them.
“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk posted Thursday afternoon on X, formerly Twitter. ”[Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.
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“Have a nice day, DJT!”
Epstein was a financier who died in prison while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges in 2019. In February, the White House promised to release a trove of documents related to the case, but what was ultimately released was largely already known.
The billionaire’s “really big bomb” may be more of a dud. It’s long been reported that Trump was on Epstein’s flight logs. But Musk’s post still signals an escalation in his sudden about-turn with Trump.
The two seemed to enjoy a honeymoon period as Musk ripped apart the federal government as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But on Thursday the two traded barbs after Musk criticized Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, a spending measure that would cut Medicaid benefits and extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
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The name-calling has only escalated since Thursday morning. Trump threatened to terminate Musk’s government contracts in a Truth Social post.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump posted. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
“Go ahead, make my day …” Musk posted on X in response.
Musk then accused Trump of covering up the Epstein files.
The Labour peer, who is the UK’s ambassador to the United States, was quizzed by James Matthews after delivering a speech in Washington.
Epstein, the convicted sex offender and financier who died in 2019, allegedly had a “close relationship” with both Mandelson and Prince Andrew, according to an internal JPMorgan report from six years ago.
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Asked by Matthews if he had stayed at Epstein’s apartment in Manhattan in June, 2009, Mandelson said: “I’m not answering any questions about him.”
The reporter then said: “He was in jail at the time for soliciting prostitution from a minor.”
Mandelson said: “My knowledge of him is something I regret. I wish I’d never met him in the first place.”
Matthews then asked again: “Why did you have an association with him, because he was in jail at the time?”
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Walking off, the Labour peer replied: “Why did many people meet him? He was a prolific networker and I wish I’d never met him in the first place.”
In February, Mandelson told Financial Times political editor George Parker to “fuck off” when he asked him about his links to Epstein.
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“I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell,” Mandelson said.
She is currently in prison for recruiting and trafficking underaged girls for the financier.
Mandelson also said: “I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.”
However, according to the FT report, “an icy chill” then descended during their conversation, and Mandelson added: “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”
A Jeffrey Epstein accuser is speaking out about past claims she made that the late pedophile kept video footage of his various friends having sex at his home, saying it’s absolutely true and that she only recanted her story years ago out of fear following threats.
“It’s no secret that everything was recorded,” Sarah Ransome, who settled a civil suit with Epstein and his madam Ghislaine Maxwell in 2018, told Good Morning Britain on Tuesday. “Multiple victims have come forward confirming my account, along with others. I have also seen recordings in his office.”
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These recordings supposedly show former President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and British business magnate Richard Branson having sex with an unnamed woman, Ransome claimed in 2016 emails that were published on Monday as part of a defamation lawsuit brought by fellow Epstein accuser, Virginia Giuffre.
A representative for Branson’s company, the Virgin Group, said Ransome’s claims are “baseless and unfounded” while citing a past interview she gave that called the tapes’ existence a work of fiction.
“We categorically reject all allegations made by Sarah Ransome. In 2019 she admitted to The New Yorker that the ‘tapes’ had been ‘invented,’ Any suggestion that Sir Richard Branson was involved in a ‘sex tape’ is entirely false. The allegations are baseless and unfounded,” said the representative in a statement to HuffPost. “The actions of Jeffrey Epstein were abhorrent and we support the right to justice for the many victims impacted by his abuse.”
No such tapes have been made public, nor has evidence supporting their existence.
The court documents published Monday include photos of Ransome, Maxwell, Epstein and other young women on Epstein’s private Caribbean island.
A final batch of seven documents from the court case was unsealed Tuesday.
Sarah Ransome leaves a New York courthouse in 2022 following the sentencing hearing of Ghislaine Maxwell.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY via Getty Images
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Ransome said she recanted the tapes’ existence years ago because Maxwell, “amongst others, regularly enforced that if I ever did come forward, myself and my family would be harmed,” she told Good Morning Britain.
Epstein died in a New York City jail in 2019 while Maxwell is currently behind bars serving out a 20-year sentence related to helping him commit his sex crimes.
An alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein has told GMB that she stands by her original claim that the billionaire paedophile kept so-called secret ‘sex tapes’ of Prince Andrew, former US President Bill Clinton and business tycoon Sir Richard Branson. All three have denied the claim. pic.twitter.com/WvYSq8EEZB
Ransome first came forward with her allegations to a New York Post reporter in 2016. She said the woman who allegedly had sex with the men had personally recalled her experiences with Ransome, particularly the woman’s one-on-one time with Trump, according to the court documents.
“She confided in me about her casual ‘friendship’ with Donald,” Ransome wrote of the woman in one email to the Post reporter. “Mr Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her ‘pert nipples.’”
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She added: “I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffery’s NY mansion on regular occasions.”
Ransome retracted these claims to the Post reporter shortly after, saying going public would bring “only bad things” and “pain for my family.” The story was not published.
Then in 2019, Ransome told The New Yorker that she entirely invented the video claims. She said she wanted to draw attention to Epstein’s crimes and make him believe that she had “evidence that would come out” if he went after her, according to her interview at the time.
Ransome told Good Morning Britain on Monday that she’d be willing to testify about their existence.
Giuffre is seeking an undisclosed amount of damages.
The royal has repeatedly denied all of Giuffre’s allegations. His legal team tried to get the case thrown out based on a previous agreement between Giuffre and Epstein, but the judge dismissed the motion.
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Here’s a breakdown of everything Andrew said in his new document.
Andrew’s denials
The royal has denied all the allegations against him, starting from before Giuffre’s decision to serve legal papers in August 2021.
Maxwell, the ex-girlfriend of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, was recently convicted of sex trafficking. Epstein killed himself behind bars a month after he was arrested for sex trafficking back in 2019, before his trial.
He was already a convicted sex offender.
Maxwell’s conviction then sparked speculation that she might reveal the names of other people involved with Epstein.
Andrew also “admits that he met Epstein in or around 1999” but denies he participated in any abuse with the disgraced financier.
The royal’s legal team said he “lacks sufficient information to admit or deny” her allegations about Epstein using “his vast connections” to create “a web of transcontinental sex trafficking”.
His counsel added that he lacked “sufficient information to admit or deny” Giuffre’s claim that Maxwell was “the highest-ranking recruiter in Epstein’s sex-trafficking enterprise”.
His lawyers also listed “consent” as one of his defences, although it’s unclear what he means by that.
Andrew also claimed Giuffre waited too long after the alleged abuse to bring a complaint.
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A “doctrine of unclean hands” is listed too, claiming that Giuffre had acted unethically related to the accusations, forfeiting her right to benefit in any way from the situation.
“Assuming, without admitting, that Giuffre has suffered any injury or damage alleged in the complaint, Giuffre’s claims are barred by the doctrine of consent,” the document states.
Andrew ‘demands a trial’
His lawyers also added: “Prince Andrew hereby demands a trial by jury on all causes of action asserted in the complaint.”
How has Giuffre responded?
David Boies, Giuffre’s representative, said Prince Andrew’s response “continues his approach of denying any knowledge or information concerning the claims against him, and purporting to blame the victim of the abuse for somehow bringing it on herself”.
He added that his client was looking forward “to confronting Prince Andrew with his denials and attempts to blame Ms Giuffre for her own abuse at his deposition and at trial”.
Lisa Bloom, who represents several of Maxwell and Epstein’s accusers, dubbed Andrew’s demand for a trial a “PR move” considering Giuffre has already requested a jury trial, as is her constitutional right.
She said Andrew’s request was therefore “meaningless”.
The Palace added that Andrew was defending his case “as a private citizen”.
Andrew released this legal document just 10 days before the start of the platinum jubilee – meaning the ongoing saga could easily overshadow his mother’s celebration of 70 years on the throne.
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