Peter Mandelson secretly tried to help Jeffrey Epstein shut down a ground breaking Mail on Sunday investigation into the paedophile's friendship with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, it can be revealed today.
Extraordinary emails unearthed from the Epstein Files expose how days after this newspaper exclusively published the first interview with Andrew's accuser Virginia Giuffre, Mandelson began to advise the paedophile on how he should 'fight back'.
Mandelson, dubbed the Dark Lord because of his skills as a spin-doctor, urged Epstein to engage Schillings - a highly combative law firm - and potentially seek public relations advice from a former editor of the Sun newspaper.
The former Labour cabinet minister even appears to have drafted a press statement as part of a PR strategy for the sex offender.
Mandelson's efforts were part of what now appears to be a double-pronged bid to derail this newspaper's investigation into Andrew's link with Epstein.
The MoS revealed in October how just before our bombshell interview with Ms Giuffre was published in February 2011, Andrew embroiled the Metropolitan Police and one of Queen Elizabeth's most senior aides in a campaign to smear Ms Giuffre.
A shocking message showed how Andrew asked his taxpayer-funded personal protection officer to investigate Ms Giuffre and passed him her confidential US social security number.
In an extraordinary email to Ed Perkins, Queen Elizabeth's deputy press secretary, on February 26, 2011, Andrew wrote: 'It would also seem she has a criminal record in the States. I have given her DoB [date of birth] and social security number for investigation with XXX, the on duty ppo [personal protection officer].'
The Met announced in December that it would not launch a criminal investigation into Andrew, to the dismay of Ms Giuffre's family.
The seeds of Andrew's downfall were sown on February 27 2011 when the MoS published a wide-ranging interview with Ms Giuffre in which she told how she had been sexually exploited and abused by Epstein for years.
Speaking to reporter Sharon Churcher, Ms Giffure, who took her own life last year, detailed how in 2001 she had been flown across the world to meet Andrew.
Accompanying the story was a photograph of Andrew with his arm around Ms Giuffre's naked waist - an image that continues to dog the ex-Prince to this day.
The following Sunday, this newspaper revealed on its front page that the FBI was going to reopen its investigation into Epstein and detailed how British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell supplied teenage girls, including Virginia, for Epstein to abuse.
Now new emails reveal how just hours before this story was published, Epstein contacted Mandelson and asked him whether he could recommend a London-based public relations expert.
Mandelson advised that the paedophile could 'possibly' contact Stuart Higgins, a former editor of the Sun. Mr Higgins this weekend said: 'I've never been contacted in connection with this, either then or ever since.'
Mandelson also urged Epstein that he and his legal team 'must start setting down the irrefutable facts, build a narrative and then fight back.'
He told the sex offender that he needed a 'UK libel lawyer' and recommended Rod Christie-Miller at the law firm Schillings, which helps oligarchs and celebrities manage their reputations.
Mandelson gave Mr Christie-Miller's contact details to Epstein, telling him to 'say you got the number from friends in London'.
Mr Christie-Millier said: 'Neither I nor the firm worked for Epstein, nor were we ever contacted by him.'
The emails provide damning evidence that Mandelson was fully aware of the harrowing allegations that Virginia was making about Epstein.
Despite this, Mandelson last month spoke about Epstein's victims by saying: 'I didn't hear their voices, other people didn't hear their voices, they were disempowered within that system.'
Speaking in a BBC interview he said there was 'a system that refused to hear their voices', adding: 'The crux of this is that so many hundreds of young women were completely trapped, powerless in the system that did not listen to what they had to say.'
Addressing the volume of emails he sent Epstein, he said: 'Do you think I would have written emails like that if I had one iota of knowledge or suspicion of what he was doing? I certainly would not.'
On March 6, the day the MoS published its story about the looming FBI probe into Epstein, Mandelson emailed the paedophile to say: 'Andrew story now running third item on BBC news. You/Ghislainc [sic] need to instruct Schillings. Rod [Christie-Miller] contacted yet?'
Later, Mandelson chased Epstein saying: 'Let me know when Schillings contacted'.
In a separate email - which appears to reference an MoS revelation that Epstein's Little Black address book contained ten telephone numbers for Mandelson - the Labour peer advised Epstein on how to brief the media.
He said: 'Any statement [should] not name Ghislaine as owner. But [should] be made very clear that phone book does not belong to you.
'This [should] go out to [the Press Association] news desk as an advisory from lawyers asap'.'
Later that month Mandelson told Epstein he had drafted him a statement.
Last night a spokesman for Mandelson said: 'Lord Mandelson regrets, and will regret until to his dying day, that he believed Epstein's lies about his criminality.
'Lord Mandelson did not discover the truth about Epstein until after his death in 2019. He is profoundly sorry that powerless and vulnerable women and girls were not given the protection they deserved.'
