Just not an American one
At last, Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book—you know, the one full of messages from boldface names wishing him many more happy years of inappropriate relationships with young girls—has destroyed a political career. Just not an American one.
Peter Mandelson, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Washington, was recalled Thursday after the extent of his friendship with the disgraced financier became impossible to deny. In a 10-page message in the now-infamous 2003 scrapbook, he called Epstein his “best pal” and included several photos of himself. Describing the financier as “mysterious,” Mandelson said that he would often be left alone with Epstein’s “interesting” friends—an assertion that appeared over a picture of an unknown young woman in her underwear.
This was too much for the British government. “The emails show that the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment,” the Foreign Office declared in a statement Thursday. “In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information.”
This is, of course, a convenient distinction. Enough messages in the birthday book reference “girls” or Epstein’s “mysterious” nature that his friends should have had some questions about his lifestyle. Instead, they demonstrated the same incuriosity that has lately swept through the MAGA movement ever since Trump declared that the Epstein saga was a nonstory.
