Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson: The two prominent Britons who come up in the Epstein Files

The latest trove of files from Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender, has sharpened scrutiny of two of his British friends: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew and younger brother of King Charles III; and Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to Washington.

“I can’t take any more of this,” the then-prince exclaimed to Epstein in an email in 2011, referring to allegations that a teenager, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, had been trafficked to him by Epstein. The email was sent a year after he severed ties with Epstein, according to his earlier account of their relationship.

Andrew has claimed he did not recall meeting Giuffre or posing for a photograph in which his arm is around her waist. He suggested that the image might have been manipulated. But in one of the newly disclosed emails, Epstein wrote to a journalist, “Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have.” The name of the woman was redacted from the email, but he appeared to be referring to Giuffre.

Lord Mandelson, too, was in contact with Epstein for longer than the British government knew when it appointed him as envoy late last year — longer even than it knew when it fired him in September. “63 years old ... you made it,” Epstein said in a birthday message to Lord Mandelson on November 6, 2016. “Just,” Lord Mandelson replied. “I have decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the US.”

Previous disclosures about the depth and duration of their ties with Epstein had already cost the two men their posts and titles. Lord Mandelson’s abrupt dismissal came even though he had helped negotiate a trade agreement between Britain and the United States. King Charles stripped his brother of his royal titles, turning him from Prince Andrew into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The defenestration of these powerful men illustrates a conspicuous difference between how the Epstein scandal has played out in Britain and in the United States. Links to Epstein have tainted the reputations of prominent Americans, like Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard University president, and Bill Gates, the philanthropist and Microsoft founder. But no American has fallen from grace quite as brutally as did Mr Mountbatten-Windsor or Lord Mandelson.

Some in Britain see a trans-Atlantic cultural divide between “the radical shamelessness of Wild West Washington and Britain’s now hypersensitized, overcentralized political club,” said Simon Jenkins, a columnist at The Guardian and the author of A Short History of America: From Tea Party to Trump.

President Donald Trump, who socialized with Epstein for years, has managed to keep the scandal at bay, though it continues to dog him politically with his MAGA base, for many of whom the Epstein affair has metastasized into a conspiracy theory. By some accounts, Epstein’s friendship with Mr Trump came to an end in the mid-2000s, well before those with his British friends.

The latest files, released by the House Oversight Committee, do not alter the timeline of Mr Trump’s relationship with Epstein, as they do with those of Lord Mandelson and Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. But they do suggest Epstein remained intently focused on Mr Trump up until his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

Lord Mandelson and Mr Mountbatten-Windsor have both expressed regret for associating with Epstein, who died by suicide in prison, as well as sympathy for his victims.

Lord Mandelson said he never witnessed improper conduct by Epstein. He told The Sun, a London news outlet, that Epstein had deceived him. “I accepted assurances he had given me about his original indictment,” Lord Mandelson said. “Like very many people, I took at face value what he said.”

Mountbatten-Windsor has steadfastly denied sexually abusing Giuffre, who died by suicide in Australia in April. Buckingham Palace, in announcing last month that it was revoking the prince’s titles, said, “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.”

Other emails paint Mr Mountbatten-Windsor as increasingly panicked as a London tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, planned to publish Giuffre’s allegations against him. “Hey there! What’s all this?” the prince wrote in an email to Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell. “I don’t know anything about this! You must SAY so please. This has NOTHING to do with me. I can’t take any more of this.”

In Lord Mandelson’s case, the email exchanges were more ironic than incriminating, given that Lord Mandelson would later develop a warm, if short-lived, rapport with Mr Trump as Britain’s ambassador during his second term.

In the November 2016 birthday exchange, Epstein answered Lord Mandelson’s reference to spending more time in the United States “in the donald white house” (Mr Trump was elected president two days later). Mandelson replied, “What’s the donald white house ? And how are you ?”

“Trump/ and having agreat deal of fun,” Epstein shot back. “in hindsight. you were right about staying away from andrew.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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