Foreign Office accused of ‘wanting the opposite manner’ over Mail on Sunday’s warning about Mandelson and Epstein assembly

The Foreign Office has been accused of a ‘whitewash’ after ignoring a warning from The Mail on Sunday that Peter Mandelson appeared to have met Jeffrey Epstein when the paedophile was under house arrest for sex offences.

Epstein’s private schedule, exclusively revealed by this newspaper last year, showed that the Labour peer was due to have two meetings with the disgraced financier at his New York mansion on consecutive days in March 2010.

Mandelson, who was Business Secretary and Gordon Brown’s First Secretary of State at the time, was visiting Manhattan as part of an official trip that cost taxpayers more than £8,000.

The MoS quizzed the Government about Epstein’s calendar last March – just a month after Mandelson started his job as ambassador to the US – and asked whether the peer had indeed met the sex offender in March 2010.

The Foreign Office, however, refused to respond to our questions and it remains unclear whether officials ever questioned Mandelson about the schedule, which had been disclosed as part of a court case.

Now new documents discovered by the MoS in the vast Epstein Files prove beyond doubt that Mandelson, who is under criminal investigation over allegations of misconduct in public office, which he is understood to deny, did visit Epstein in New York.

It comes as questions mount this weekend over Downing Street’s vetting of Mandelson before his appointment as ambassador, which National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell described as ‘weirdly rushed’.

Sir Keir Starmer did not speak to Lord Mandelson before giving him the job and instead allowed two aides to handle the process.

The relationship between Lord Peter Mandelson and the late financier Jeffrey Epstein has become a major political scandal, leading to Mandelson’s dismissal from his role as UK Ambassador to the United States in late 2025 and an ongoing criminal investigation in 2026 

The head of the Foreign Office Yvette Cooper, whose focus is currently dominated by the escalating crisis in the Middle East and the Gulf

Last night, shadow minister Alex Burghart said the Foreign Office ‘appears to have turned a blind eye’ to the MoS’s warning.

‘This a truly shocking revelation, he said. ‘This was a clear warning to the Government that their vetting of Mandelson had been completely mishandled.

‘The Foreign Office’s reaction appeared to be nothing short of a whitewash.

‘The Conservatives have been fighting hard to get the government to admit what it knew –these new revelations from The Mail on Sunday show just how determined they were to look the other way.’

During his house arrest, Epstein was still allowed to leave his mansion in Florida.

The newly released documents show he arrived by private jet at an airport near New York at 10.30am on March 2, 2010.

He met Mandelson at 7.30pm that evening and again at 1.30pm the following day.

An hour ahead of their first meeting, Mandelson requested that Epstein send his personal driver to pick him up, apparently because he was concerned that his movements would be monitored by UK Government officials.

‘Can JoJo [Fontanilla, Epstein’s driver] pick me up at 6 30 or so to avoid official car monitoring my every movement??,’ he wrote.

The Foreign Office said last night: ‘We will not comment while there is an ongoing police investigation.’