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 Mr. Epstein in an email in 2011, referring to allegations that a teenager, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, had been trafficked to him by Mr. Epstein. The email was sent a year after he severed ties with Mr. Epstein, according to his earlier account of their relationship.
Andrew has claimed he did not recall meeting Ms. 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, Mr. 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 Ms. Giuffre.
Mr. Mandelson, too, was in contact with Mr. 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,” Mr. Epstein said in a birthday message to Mr. Mandelson on Nov. 6, 2016. “Just,” Mr. 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 Mr. Epstein had already cost the two men their posts and titles. Mr. Mandelson’s abrupt dismissal came even though he had helped negotiate a trade agreement between Britain and the United States. Charles stripped his brother of his royal titles, turning him from Prince Andrew into Mr. 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 Mr. Epstein have tainted the reputations of prominent Americans, like Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard 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 Mr. 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 Trump, who socialized with Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Epstein, as they do with those of Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor. But they do suggest Mr. Epstein remained intently focused on Mr. Trump up until his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.
Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor have both expressed regret for associating with Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in prison, as well as sympathy for his victims.
Mr. Mandelson said he never witnessed improper conduct by Mr. Epstein. He told The Sun, a London news outlet, that Mr. Epstein had deceived him. “I accepted assurances he had given me about his original indictment,” Mr. Mandelson said. “Like very many people, I took at face value what he said.”
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor has steadfastly denied sexually abusing Ms. 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 Ms. Giuffre’s allegations against him. “Hey there! What’s all this?” the prince wrote in an email to Mr. 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 Mr. Mandelson’s case, the email exchanges were more ironic than incriminating, given that Mr. 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, Mr. Epstein answered Mr. Mandelson’s reference to spending more time in the United States “in the donald white house” (Mr. Trump was elected president two days later). Mr. Mandelson replied, “What’s the donald white house ? And how are you ?”
“Trump/ and having agreat deal of fun,” Mr. Epstein shot back. “in hindsight. you were right about staying away from andrew.”
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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