[BBC] Jeffrey Epstein made $75,000 (£55,000) of payments to accounts connected to Lord Mandelson, bank statements released by the US Department of Justice suggest.
Between 2003 and 2004, Epstein appears to have sent three separate $25,000 payments referencing Lord Mandelson.
The payments appear as part of millions of documents released on Friday relating to late sex offender Epstein, the largest number shared by the US government since a law mandated their release last year.
Lord Mandelson said he had no record or recollection of receiving the sums and did not know whether the documents were authentic.
He reiterated his regret for "ever having known Epstein" and for continuing his association following the disgraced financier's conviction, apologising "unequivocally to the women and girls who suffered".
Images of the former UK ambassador to the US in his underwear have also been uncovered in the latest tranche of Epstein files.
In a redacted picture, he is seen standing next to a female, whose face is not visible.
He has said he "cannot place the location or the woman and I cannot think what the circumstances were".
It is not known when or where the images of Lord Mandelson and the female were taken.
Being named or pictured in the files is not an indication of wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, emails show Lord Mandelson tried to change government policy on a planned tax on bankers' bonuses, following requests from Epstein.
"Trying hard to amend," Lord Mandelson wrote to Epstein in December 2009. "Treasury digging in but I am on [the] case."
At the time Lord Mandelson was business secretary in Gordon Brown's government.
Lord Mandelson has told the BBC that every UK and international bank was making the same argument about the impact on UK financial services, adding: "My conversations in government at the time reflected the views of the sector as a whole not a single individual."
The recently released bank statements, first reported by the Financial Times, appear to show three separate payments referencing Lord Mandelson, who was Labour MP for Hartlepool at the time, being sent from Epstein's JP Morgan bank accounts.
The first, dated 14 May 2003, shows a payment was sent to a Barclays bank account where Reinaldo Avila da Silva - Lord Mandelson's partner at the time - is named as "A/C", typically an abbreviation for account.
In that payment, a "Peter Mandelson" is named on the account as "BEN", which is often an abbreviation for beneficiary.
The second and third payments of $25,000 were made to HSBC accounts only days apart in June 2004. In both, "Peter Mandelson" is the only person named, again as "BEN".
Could be something nefarious, could be paying off a bet...
It is unclear if the three payments ever made it into any of the named accounts.
Da Silva, who married Lord Mandelson in 2023, appears elsewhere in the most recent Epstein release. Emails from 2009 show Epstein sent him £10,000 for an osteopathy course.
Asked for a response to da Silva's loan, Lord Mandelson said he had been "very clear" about his relationship with Epstein in interviews with the BBC.
"I have nothing more to add," he said.
Lord Mandelson was later sent to Washington by Sir Keir Starmer in December 2024 as the UK's ambassador to the US, but was sacked the following September after further revelations emerged about his friendship with Epstein.
Emails revealed he had been in contact with Epstein after the US financier's 2008 conviction, sending a string of supportive messages.
On Sunday, Housing Secretary Steve Reed confirmed the government was not aware of Mandelson's alleged financial links to Epstein, after being asked about it by Laura Kuenssberg.
"You're talking about things that happened more than 20 years ago," he said, stressing "there was no knowledge" about what was going on at that time.
Reed added that the reason Mandelson was removed as US ambassador was because "there were things he had not disclosed" to government.
"I think he should answer questions about his own life, not me."
On 11 January, he told Laura Kuenssberg that his relationship with Epstein was a "terrible mistake".
During the interview, Lord Mandelson also said he believed he was "kept separate" from Epstein's sex life because he is gay and denied seeing young girls at Epstein's properties.
Days later, he offered a more direct apology to the victims of the disgraced financier, telling Newsnight he was "wrong" to continue associating with Epstein.
Epstein's 2008 conviction was part of a plea bargain he reached in Florida. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to two charges, including soliciting girls as young as 14 for prostitution.
In 2019, Epstein died in a New York prison cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
#4
I know I get regular $25,000 payments all the time without realizing it.
Posted by: chris ||
02/02/2026 0:37 Comments ||
Top||
#5
They keep trying:
Donald Trump has threatened to sue Grammy Awards host Trevor Noah after the comedian claimed the president visited convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious pedophile Caribbean island.
Trump said he will be suing Noah, whom he described as “poor and talentless,” for “plenty of $S” in a Truth Social post on Monday morning.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/02/2026 3:46 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Good, stupid POS should have kept his ass in south Africa.
Posted by: chris ||
02/02/2026 4:16 Comments ||
Top||
[Breitbart] A leader in a group linked to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will plead guilty to accepting bribes.
The news surrounds the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Mathieu Zahui who has admitted laundering money through poor overseas nations and back to Washington, DC insiders, the Daily Wire reported Friday.
The foundation allegedly shipped $800,000 to a company in Kenya headed by Zahui’s friend who paid him $12,000 while the company pocketed over $130,000 in the scheme, but did no work for it.
In a press release, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Public Affairs said in 2024 federal law enforcement asked Zahui about his relationship with the company, but he allegedly lied and said he never received benefits from it.
He has since agreed to plead guilty to one count of accepting gratuities from the company and a single count of making a false statement to law enforcement.
“He faces a maximum penalty of two years in prison for the gratuities charge and five years in prison for the false statement charge,” the DOJ news release said.
In a statement regarding the case, Acting Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Sean M. Bottary of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Inspector General (USAID-OIG) said, “The USADF Director of Financial Management’s fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people. As the Inspector General with continued oversight jurisdiction over U.S.-funded foreign assistance, we will utilize our global investigative reach to aggressively detect and disrupt those who defraud taxpayer dollars programmed overseas.”
The Wire report noted that leftists praised the foundation when Zahui prevented the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from entering its building.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) recently introduced legislation to terminate the foundation his office said was “made defunct by an Executive Order from President Trump.”
Lee’s office pointed to the fact Zahui plead guilty to corruption and accepting bribes and the Terminate Unaccountable Spending, Abuse, Deception, and Fraud (USADF) Act would cut the foundation from statutory law.
Lee said, “The USADF has shown a clear and corrupt pattern of fraud for which its Director of Financial Management has just pled guilty. This sorry excuse for an agency misused taxpayer dollars to hand out government contracts and evaded DOGE to cover up the deceit. President Trump was right to shut this down, and the Terminate USADF Act will make its elimination permanent so that no further fraud can occur.”
USAID was one of the federal agencies President Donald Trump’s administration zeroed in on during its efforts to root out government waste, fraud, and abuse, per Breitbart News.
[Spectator] During the 2025 gubernatorial election the voters of Virginia believed they were choosing between pragmatic Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger and lackluster Republican Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. The former was well funded and portrayed favorably by the corporate "news" media as a centrist, while the latter struggled to raise money and was labeled an extremist because of her strong support of gun rights. In the end, Spanberger won by double digits, and most Virginians thought they were getting a slightly more liberal governor than her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin. Yet the moment she took office, it became obvious that Gov. Spanberger was no moderate.
This is something to remember as the 2026 midterms approach. Every Democrat who utters the word "affordability" must be regarded as a con artist.
Immediately upon assuming office, she signed an executive order that reversed her predecessor’s policy whereby state and local law enforcement were required to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to detain illegal aliens convicted of criminal offences. This order sent a clear message that Spanberger viewed immigration through the ideological lens of far-left Democrats like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rather than the moderate perspective she espoused during the election. She didn’t deign to tell Virginia’s voters how limiting cooperation with DHS would protect them and their families from criminals who are in the country illegally. Instead, she recited the tired shibboleths echoed in every sanctuary state:
#4
GOP is not reading the room and is forcing sub-par milquetoast diversity candidates on us. Winsome Earle-Sears was uninspiring and couldnt get people off the couch.
OH, FL, VA - GOP keeps pushing candidates that the only reason people have to vote for them is that they are not commies --- which does not motivate the base to get out to vote!
If Trump lost Virginia by five points in 2024, how the hell did they think Winsome Earle-Sears was going to get more people out to vote?
Because she wasnt a Dem! Because she was a marine. That was her platform. The entire VA GOP should resign in shame. It is not rocket science. GOP needs to push candidates that the base identifies with. GOP runs polls and Winsome Earle-Sears never had a good one. She trailed by double digits since the time she announced. No one should be surprised she lost.
#5
The other problems in VA, is that the two or three counties bordering DC and Maryland are very populated and very blue. They decide elections, just like NYC decides elections in NY. Also the rest of the red counties and many of the politicians are very religious. It makes finding a candidate that can win at the state level difficult for the GOP. (My father lived in VA and I got to see how very different the rest of VA was compared to the blue counties.
#7
Earle-Sears went anti-Trump in 2022. She was also "fundamentally non-serious". Can we all stop pretending black women have any business serving in any position of authority?
[Breitbart] Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, Massachusetts, is going viral for saying that every human on earth has the "legal right" to come to the U.S.A.
Wu’s comments have resurfaced and are once again gaining thousands of comments from outraged Americans.
Of course, federal immigration law states that hopeful immigrants cannot just arrive on America’s shores, but must file for visas or asylum while still in their own country (or otherwise outside the U.S.), then go through applications and interviews before being allowed to come to the United States.
The far-left mayor’s comments have elicited a wide range of replies from congressmen, conservatives, and tens of thousands of regular Americans alike.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
