ARRESTED: Lord Mandelson Taken Into Custody in Epstein Leak Probe as Starmer Government Teeters

LONDON — Lord Peter Mandelson, the veteran Labour powerbroker and former British Ambassador to the United States, was arrested Monday at his north London home on suspicion of misconduct in public office, becoming the second major figure in as many weeks to be detained by British police as part of the widening fallout from the Justice Department’s release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Plain-clothed officers arrived at an address in Camden, and footage broadcast on Sky News and ITV showed Mandelson — wearing khakis, a grey sweater, and a dark jacket — being led out of his house and placed in the left rear seat of a waiting unmarked Ford Focus police car. The Metropolitan Police confirmed he had been taken to a London police station for interview, following search warrants executed at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas.

Mandelson’s arrest comes four days after an equally extraordinary development: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, was arrested on suspicion of a similar offence related to his friendship with Epstein, and released after 11 hours in custody while the police investigation continues.

Both arrests resonate with a pattern of emails previously reported by The Bureau — correspondence that together paint a portrait of a political insider keenly focused on leveraging his government contacts and Epstein’s global network for personal and commercial gain, even as he continued to serve in Cabinet. That portrait, assembled through analysis of Epstein Act disclosures naming related figures including the former Prince Andrew and his aide David Stern, and former CCP-connected tycoon Desmond Shum, in addition to bankers including JP Morgan’s Jes Staley, extends well beyond the misconduct allegations now before Scotland Yard — into a troubling web of undisclosed dealings with Chinese Communist Party-linked financial institutions that Mandelson repeatedly denied.

Tip on Brown Leaving Govt, Among Sensitive Leaks

Police are investigating Mandelson over emails that appear to show him leaking sensitive political and market information to Epstein while serving as a UK Cabinet minister between 2008 and 2010, at the height of the global banking crisis.

Among the most damning disclosures: emails from 2009 appear to show him passing on an assessment of potential policy measures, discussing a planned tax on bankers’ bonuses, and confirming an imminent bailout package for the euro before it was publicly announced. In perhaps the most politically explosive single message, Mandelson appeared to tip Epstein off that Prime Minister Gordon Brown planned to resign as Labour leader hours before he actually did so, writing “Finally got him to go today…” on May 10, 2010.

The arrest follows police searches of two properties linked to Mandelson carried out last week as part of their criminal probe, spurred by the publication of the email cache more than three weeks ago.

Mandelson’s arrest lands like a gut punch to an already listing Starmer premiership. In the wake of fresh revelations about the former envoy, Starmer’s chief of staff, communications chief, and cabinet secretary all quit their posts, while some Labour MPs have publicly called for Starmer himself to go.

Starmer apologized to Epstein’s victims, saying: “I am sorry. Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you, sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointing him.”

In the House of Commons on Monday, shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood accused the Government of acting “with the urgency of a tired sloth on a bank holiday Monday” in releasing documents related to Mandelson’s appointment, warning that “careful work must not become a euphemism for managed delay.” Chief Secretary Darren Jones confirmed the first tranche of appointment documents is expected “very shortly in early March,” but that correspondence between Downing Street and Mandelson would be withheld for now because of “the Metropolitan Police interest.”

Today’s arrest fits squarely within the pattern The Bureau has been documenting for weeks — one that depicts not merely a friendship gone wrong, but a political operator who appears to have used his proximity to power as a commodity, trading government access and insider intelligence through Epstein’s network for financial and professional advantage on both sides of the world.

The Bureau reported on emails showing Mandelson, while still serving as Business Secretary, writing to Epstein in glowing terms about the reception he was receiving on a 2010 trip to Beijing — describing meetings with aerospace executives, railway officials, and Foreign Ministry hosts who were pressing him to extend his stay. Epstein’s reply made the transaction explicit: “STAY, you should move there for two years and associate with JPM [JP Morgan].”

Within months of leaving government, Mandelson had done precisely that — if the Epstein emails can be trusted as evidence. By April 2011, he confirmed to Epstein that China International Capital Corporation, a Beijing investment bank operating under Communist Party guidance, had retained his newly founded lobbying firm, Global Counsel. "CICC retain us cos think we have something to offer Chinese," he wrote — the "something" being, evidently, his three decades of British political access: from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown and ultimately Keir Starmer, and the business and elite networks that had coalesced behind each Labour premier in turn.

Mandelson added that “Henry K” — almost certainly Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State and the most powerful pro-China engagement advocate of his generation — had advised the firm to position itself as “go-betweens for those with commercial disputes.”

An earlier thread of emails revealed how Mandelson paved his path to access in Beijing in 2010, and how a four-way network was established between Mandelson, a Shanghai tycoon with exquisite access to the Politburo, Jeffrey Epstein, and a Chinese military intelligence-linked investment fund called CITIC.

Launching that network into action, Mandelson used his position to secure private meetings beyond the reach of his own government’s oversight. “My schedule in China is a bit complicated,” the Labour powerbroker wrote to Desmond Shum on August 30, 2010. “I arrive on Monday 13 Sep with an official UK delegation until Wednesday. I then want to stay on until Fri/Sat unofficially to meet people and network for the future but I am not sure how to do this, where to stay or get myself around because I want to be independent of the Embassy.”

The email, released among more than three million pages of Jeffrey Epstein files by the US Department of Justice, showed the former British First Secretary of State asking a Chinese billionaire with deep ties to the Politburo Standing Committee to arrange private networking on a government trip to Beijing — beyond the knowledge of British diplomatic staff.

Other emails reported by The Bureau showed Shum connecting Epstein with CITIC, the entity linked to the so-called “Chinagate” donation and influence scandal that shadowed Bill Clinton’s White House.

The emails The Bureau has reviewed show Epstein operating not as a passive friend offering casual counsel, but as an active strategist — coaching Mandelson on how to monetize his relationships, while simultaneously running a parallel operation with Jes Staley, then a senior JP Morgan executive who would later become CEO of Barclays. In those exchanges, Epstein pushed Staley to cultivate China’s most senior Communist Party officials, advising him to adopt a “deliberately submissive posture” and to emphasize guanxi — the transactional bonds of trust that govern elite Chinese political relationships.

Staley reported back to Epstein, not to his own board, on meetings with Wang Qishan and Minister Li Yuanchao, the man who controlled every senior appointment across China’s government, military, and state enterprises.

The through-line connecting Mandelson, Staley, JP Morgan, and Beijing’s party elite runs directly through Epstein — a convicted sex offender whose extraordinary influence over some of the most powerful figures in Western finance and politics remains one of the central unanswered questions of the entire scandal.

That influence extended to Global Counsel itself, which lobbied on behalf of Chinese entities including Shein, TikTok, and Alibaba, and which went into administration last week, 13 days after co-founder Benjamin Wegg-Prosser resigned as CEO, after clients severed relationships over the Epstein connection. Mandelson had also served as president of the Great Britain China Centre, a Foreign Office body, for seven years — and was, according to The Bureau’s reporting, the only Labour peer to vote against recognizing the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang in 2021.

The criminal question now before Scotland Yard is narrower than any of that, but in some ways more immediately devastating: did a serving British Cabinet minister systematically betray his government’s most sensitive deliberations to a convicted sex offender — and leverage that relationship for personal gain?

Parliament may soon have part of its answer. The Intelligence and Security Committee has been granted access to Mandelson’s vetting files. The Metropolitan Police, for now, is asking that certain materials be withheld to protect the integrity of an investigation that, as of mid-Monday, had its primary suspect sitting in a London police station.