Are Mandelson’s versions truthful?
Mandelson is said to have forwarded emails to Epstein while at a Cabinet Meeting in No.10.
( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9vz8d0n85o )
There have been suggestions that the government is unable to trace these emails because they were sent on Mandelson’s private email.
There appears to be some deep spin going on here. Firstly, that any and all electronic communication from and within No 10 are not closely monitored is beyond belief. It is customary to sandbox important meeting rooms such that no electronic communication can enter or leave other than via controlled methods. This simple security is to prevent listening devices being planted on any attendees and then broadcasting to external listeners.
Israeli PM planted a device in the British Foreign Secretary’s toilet after a visit but it was promptly detected.
( https://www.politico.eu/article/benjamin-netanyahu-bugged-bathroom-boris-johnson-israel-uk/ )
One then has to consider the role of MI5 which is to identify treasonous behaviour. This would require inter alia blanket surveillance of all Ministerial persons. If they missed this one, it would be a catastrophic intelligence failure.
Mandelson was seeking to impress and so he might have lied that he was actually sending the message from No 10 to give Epstein the impression of how important he was to him and how he could deliver, could provide confidential information from ‘the horse’s mouth’.
Epstein was a master of the con and of deep manipulation and probably was not for a moment fooled. Mandelson always appears way out of his depth when dealing with Epstein.
This leads us to Mandelson himself. If he did not know he was under surveillance he was fundamentally incompetent. More likely, he believed that though his behaviour was known, nothing would be done about it. There are two possibilities here: he believed and may well have known that there were many others who were behaving in a similar way and nothing was being done about them, or he had friends within the security services who would make sure nothing happened to him, or both.
It beggars belief that the Russians would be listening more closely to Ministerial conversations than MI5 and GCHQ!!! Recall the Russian intercept of a text message from the British PM, Liz Truss, to the US confirming the destruction of Nordstream.
( https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/russian-spy-chief-weighs-in-on-truss-alleged-it-s-done-text/)
Salt Typhon was said to be a Chinese hacker group who accessed senior UK Cabinet level communications for many years. ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/26/china-hacked-downing-street-phones-for-years/ )
Either way, the ‘official’ story does not pass the smell test.