Heads are rolling across Europe. New documents released by the Department of Justice reveal that a string of European officials maintained ties to Jeffrey Epstein—not before his crimes came to light, but after.
The Hill reported that Peter Mandelson, the former U.K. ambassador to the U.S., resigned from the House of Lords on Tuesday. Norway's ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, Mona Juul, has been sidelined from her post. Slovakia's Miroslav Lajčák, a former president of the United Nations General Assembly and adviser to Prime Minister Robert Fico, stepped down after text messages with Epstein surfaced.
Three countries. Three officials. One convicted sex offender they all chose to keep in their orbit.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. That was supposed to be the end of polite society's relationship with the man. Instead, the DOJ files paint a picture of European elites who treated a child sex conviction as a minor inconvenience—something to navigate around, not a reason to sever contact.
The Mandelson revelations are the most politically explosive, and they trace back years. In 2003, Mandelson wrote Epstein a 10-page note calling the financier his "best pal." By December 2009—more than a year after Epstein's guilty plea—Mandelson was still in his inbox.
That month, Epstein emailed Mandelson, then the first secretary of state, about whether JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should call Alistair Darling, the U.K.'s chancellor of the exchequer and head of the British treasury, to offer more money for a small business fund in exchange for a tax reduction during the global financial crisis. Mandelson's reply was two words and a conjunction:
"Yes and mildly threaten."
A sitting first secretary of state, corresponding with a convicted child sex offender about leveraging a major bank CEO to influence the British treasury. The casual tone is almost worse than the substance. This wasn't a man maintaining an awkward acquaintance—it was a working relationship.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer sacked Mandelson last September over his connection to Epstein. On Thursday, speaking in East Sussex, Starmer delivered a public apology:
"I am sorry. Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson's lies and appointed him, and sorry that even now you're forced to watch this story unfold in public once again."
Starmer acknowledged that Mandelson had misled him directly, saying Mandelson "portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew." A 10-page letter to your "best pal" is a strange way to barely know someone.
The real question Starmer's apology raises is the one he'd rather not answer: what due diligence was performed before appointing Mandelson as ambassador to the United States in the first place? Epstein's conviction was public record. Mandelson's social connections to the financier had been the subject of media scrutiny for years. Starmer appointed him anyway—and now wants credit for firing him after documents forced his hand.
Mona Juul, Norway's ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, has been sidelined while the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reviews her relationship with Epstein. Juul's defense rests on her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, whose own relationship with Epstein she describes as the origin of any contact.
"It is important for me to clarify that the contact I have had with Epstein has originated in my spouse's relationship with him. I have had no independent social or professional relationship with Epstein, including not mediating or connecting contacts to Epstein."
She then offered a partial concession:
"However, in retrospect, I see that I should have been much more careful. This also applies to a short private visit in 2011, while I was on leave from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which I now acknowledge that I should have handled differently."
A "short private visit" in 2011, three years after Epstein's conviction. The framing is meticulous. She was "on leave." The visit was "short." She had no "independent" relationship. Every word calibrated to create maximum distance from a man she nonetheless chose to visit.
The DOJ documents also revealed that in October 2014, Camilla Reksten-Monsen sent Epstein an invitation to a dinner party on behalf of Juul and Rød-Larsen, intended for filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn. Six years after the conviction, the couple was still routing social invitations through Epstein. That is not the behavior of people on the periphery of someone's life.
Then there is Miroslav Lajčák. The former president of the UN General Assembly exchanged text messages with Epstein in October 2018. They are difficult to read as anything other than what they appear to be.
"Don't you miss me there?"
"Why don't you invite me for these games?"
"I would take the 'MI' girl."
Epstein's reply:
"Who wouldn't. You can have them both, I am not possessive. And their sisters."
Lajčák resigned. There is nothing to analyze here that the messages themselves don't already make plain. A senior international official, texting a convicted sex offender about women as though browsing a catalog. Epstein sent Lajčák a photo in the same exchange—the contents of which are not viewable in the released documents.
The Epstein story has always been about two things: what he did, and who let him keep doing it. The DOJ releases confirm what has been obvious for years—Epstein's network of elite enablers didn't scatter after his 2008 conviction. They adapted. They communicated more carefully. They used intermediaries and euphemisms. But they stayed.
This is the defining feature of institutional corruption at the highest levels. It is not that powerful people didn't know. It is that knowing didn't matter. A guilty plea for procuring a child for prostitution was, for this class of people, a reputational speed bump. Mandelson kept emailing. Juul kept visiting. Lajčák kept texting. The conviction changed nothing about how they treated the man—only how carefully they documented it.
Resignations are not accountability. Mandelson leaving the House of Lords, Lajčák stepping down from his advisory role, Juul being "sidelined" pending review—these are political consequences, not legal ones. None of these individuals has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The system is working exactly as designed: absorb the shock, sacrifice the most exposed figures, and move on before anyone asks harder questions about the broader network.
Starmer's apology was polished and contrite. It was also reactive. He believed Mandelson's misrepresentations, appointed him to one of the most important diplomatic posts in British government, and only reversed course when the documentary evidence became undeniable. The apology is directed at the people Epstein harmed. It should also be directed at the British public, who were asked to trust a government that put a man with these associations one handshake from the Oval Office.
The DOJ files have now reached across the Atlantic and toppled officials in three countries. The documents keep coming. The names keep surfacing. And the question that hangs over all of it remains the same one it has always been: how many more are there?
Europe's political class spent years assuring everyone that Epstein was someone else's problem. The receipts say otherwise.
