Revealed: Peter Mandelson asked Jeffrey Epstein for Israel advice

Lord Peter Mandelson asked Jeffrey Epstein to assist with a background check on an Israeli political consultant, Declassified can reveal.

The Labour party grandee and lobbyist – who is now Britain’s ambassador to the US – has always denied having “any kind of professional or business relationship with Epstein in any form”.

But leaked messages show Mandelson contacted him from his work email address in 2013, more than five years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor.

Mandelson signed off the email in his capacity as chairman of Global Counsel, the multi-million pound lobbying firm that he co-founded.

The email refers to a little-known Israeli political consultant, called Asaf Eisin.

“Can you ask Ehud [Barak, the former Israeli prime minister] whether he knows/thinks of this Israeli guy living in London,” Mandelson wrote. “He says he worked on political campaigns for Ehud. Thanks. Peter.”

The leaked email.

It is not clear whether he got a response, but records show that Epstein forwarded the message to Barak’s personal email address.

The correspondence is contained in a huge leak of Barak’s emails, published by a file-sharing website, Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS).

They reportedly come from a pro-Palestine hacking consortium. “Dozens of details” have since been independently verified by the Sunday Times.

The Foreign Office declined to comment when approached by Declassified but did not dispute the email’s authenticity.

Mandelson once told a journalist to “fuck off” when asked about his relationship with the sex trafficker.

His spokesperson has previously said: “Lord Mandelson very much regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein. This connection has been a matter of public record for some time. He never had any kind of professional or business relationship with Epstein in any form.”

Global Counsel was asked to comment.

This is not the first time emails have been disclosed detailing the relationship between Epstein and Mandelson.

Epstein sent an email to JP Morgan bankers in 2009 boasting of his friendship with Mandelson, who he referred to as “Petie”.

The historian Andrew Lownie, whose recent biography of Prince Andrew exposed new details about the British establishment’s links to Epstein, told Declassified: “I’ve always felt that Peter Mandelson has questions to answer about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein – and indeed his relationship with Prince Andrew. I can understand concerns about his appointment as British ambassador.

He added: “For legal reasons, I was not able to put everything I know in my book, ‘Entitled’, but I welcome these further investigations into him.”