251. The man who rumbled Mandelson: Dan Neidle's Epstein files investigation

11:38Dan Neidle:Yeah. It was all depressing and shocking. But behind the scenes, obviously the banks weren't very happy with this. There were emails where Mandelson is discussing with Epstein, Mandelson trying to persuade the Chancellor not to do this. And clearly Epstein is liaising with J.P. Morgan. So essentially, Mandelson is acting as a lobbyist and advisor to this guy who I think we can probably legally safely describe as very corrupt, J.P. Morgan, called Jess Staley.

12:04Robert Peston:And we should remind people he then subsequently became chief executive of Barclays and was forced out of Barclays because the board and indeed the Financial Conduct Authority ruled that he had not been full and frank in terms of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

12:22Dan Neidle:Which is an understatement. There was this discussion about lobbying, and that looked improper. But then there is an email from Epstein to Mandelson saying, should Jamie Dimon call Darling, Alistair Darling, UK Chancellor, should he call him again? And Mandelson said, yes, and mildly threatened.

12:44Steph McGovern:So bully the Chancellor, essentially.

12:46Dan Neidle:And it looks like Epstein's a bit shocked by this because Epstein actually responds saying, should we instead, and there's something about some apprenticeship fund or something you could dangle in front of the Chancellor, obviously wasn't going to do anything. But this was passed on to JP Morgan. And indeed, Jamie Dimon did threaten the Chancellor. We know that because in Alistair Darling's autobiography, he talks about having a call from Jamie Dimon. It's a pretty fun bit to read because Diamond says, if you do this, we may sell our holdings of UK government bonds.

13:17Robert Peston:Which is an extraordinary thing for a bank to say. I mean, we're basically saying we will do our best to bankrupt the UK by dumping our holdings of UK government debt. I mean, absolutely astonishing.

13:33Dan Neidle:Darling was never the world's most charismatic politician, but he was very decent. It was thoroughly decent.

13:39Robert Peston:I knew him very well. I mean, you know, so tell us what then transpires.

13:44Dan Neidle:Darling responds to that by saying, but you don't hold these guilds to us a favour. You hold them because it gets you a return. Yes, good point. And then Diamond says, well, we may not proceed with our plan to build a headquarters in the UK. And Darling says, but, you know, you've already signed a lease. So it's not the world's most impressive threat in the end. Lots of other bankers try to threaten. But looking at this, I was stunned that a member of the British cabinet had advised a foreign bank to threaten the British government.

14:15Robert Peston:They're supposed to be the same team. This is like, you know, if you're in, you know, if you're in, it's like if you're playing for my favourite team, you know, Arsenal, and you advise, you know, one of the opposing team's, you know, defenders to break the leg of one of your colleagues. It's unreal. It appears so disloyal.

14:35Steph McGovern:And on top of that, yes, it's against a colleague. It's also against the country, of the interests of the UK, of the interests of everyone who's suffering because of the consequences of the credit crunch.

14:46Dan Neidle:It is. I've spoken to people who were in government circles at the time, and they regard this as essentially traitorous. Yes, exactly. In fact, some of them asked me if it was, in fact, treason. And it isn't. To commit treason, you basically have to sleep with the king's daughters or murder the Lord High Chamberlain. There's chances of that in all of this as well, isn't there?

15:04Robert Peston:I was going to say, is there any of that in the Epstein files? You've literally been living and breathing every one of them.

15:09Dan Neidle:There is just so much. I can't say a definite no, but it doesn't look like it.

15:12Robert Peston:You've got your hackles up at this point. You're totally immersed in them. Well, I'm not.

15:18Dan Neidle:This is kind of by accident. So my wife had just gone out with our younger son to a soft play. And I then stumbled across this. I call Jim Pickard at the FT. My wife then comes back. By the time she's come back, it's gone from not having found it to on the front page of the FT. So Jim Puckett and the FT are clearly some kind of geniuses at moving things fast. So that was on the FT. Then I kept looking to see what else there was in this. And then I found these emails which had been leaked by Mandelson to Epstein. And he wasn't leaking everything. It was highly selective, a few emails of the most really sensitive material at the height of the financial crisis.

15:57Dan Neidle:How are banks going to be regulated?

15:58Robert Peston:So these are the Shriti Vadira. Yeah. So this is her note about essentially the health of the banking system. And how it can be improved, yeah. So that was one of them. And the other one was the Nick Butler assessment of essentially, you know, what was happening to the deficit, whether taxes would have to go up, ways around all that.

16:18Dan Neidle:So the Sridhar Vedera note is about how you can get the financial system moving again, how you can get banks lending to small business. And she's looking at ways of freeing up financial markets.

16:28Robert Peston:And we should just remind people that Sridhar Vadira becomes a special advisor to Gordon Brown, really back in the late 90s. At this stage, she is a middle ranking minister in terms of her title. But she is one of the more influential members of the government because she is so close to Gordon Brown. And she's actually one of the other things which is sort of extraordinary about this is she is actually number two to Peter Maddelson within the Department of Business. She is writing this confidential note, essentially about the health of the banking system, with some policy recommendations about what the government should then do, which he, her boss, despite the fact it's plainly confidential, is sending on to Epstein.

17:13Robert Peston:Yeah.

17:14Dan Neidle:And I mean, her titles understates what she was because she was really Gordon Brown's most influential advisor on the financial crisis, which I think pretty much everyone would agree he did a very successful job.

17:27Robert Peston:So talk us through precisely what was in that note and, you know, what then happens to that note.

17:32Dan Neidle:The note discusses some fairly technical ways of freeing up the financial markets, but that is going to be of interest to people who are players in the financial markets, I think fairly obviously. and mandelson just flicks it across to epstein there's no comment or indication of what happened

17:47Steph McGovern:next the interesting thing about it as well is the speed at which he forwards on this information too because it's not like he sits and thinks about it and goes right shall i send it to him is this a good idea or not it's literally seconds after receiving it i can't remember if this one is

18:01Dan Neidle:a few minutes or four seconds but what one of these two emails that we're going to discuss was four seconds so there's a question as to how he did that and it looks a lot like some idiot gave him a device or let him have a device which had both government and personal emails on it so that

18:15Robert Peston:that was the interesting question for me um which i hope this isn't too much of a digression all we do is digression but but before we get on to the nick butler one which is also i think uh incredibly uh important and just just just just astonishing in terms of the fact that it was forwarded to Epstein. Do you understand how much did Mandelson cover his tracks in terms of how this stuff was forwarded? Can you see whether this is forwarded from his personal email and therefore how it gets from being a government document into his personal emails?

18:58Dan Neidle:So these documents are redacted. They've been clearly the documents which Trump and co care about are hand redacted. These they couldn't care less about. So it's all automatically redacted. I think what they're trying to do is redact every name that isn't Epstein, but they're really bad at it. So you end up with some emails where Mandelson and his email address that have just reacted throughout somewhere. His name is redacted, but his email address is visible and so forth. But it looks very much like all of them are coming from a personal BT internet account.

19:27Robert Peston:And does that explain because one of the things the sort of subsequent shocking things that has uh happened is that when mandelson was vetted for the job of ambassador to the u.s at the end of 2024 none of the vetting uncovered apparently any of this rogue behavior um and so the question is is just vetting in general in this country absolutely diabolical, or was he being very clever in the way that he was disguising how he was forwarding this stuff on?

20:08Dan Neidle:Indications are that he's not hugely tech literate, so it wasn't then.

20:12Robert Peston:So that would imply, just a bit of it, it's absolutely explicit, that actually this country is unbelievably rubbish at vetting the conduct of people who were being appointed to, I mean, in this case, probably the second or third most important job within the government.

20:29Dan Neidle:I think they made a bad mistake. So they asked, and Gordon Brown asked in September, were there emails from Mandelson to Epstein? And they looked and they saw there were no emails from the official to Epstein. No one noticed or remembered that he had a device that had business emails and personal emails on it.

20:46Robert Peston:A handheld device, maybe a BlackBerry, maybe an iPhone. BlackBerry for sure. So it'd be a BlackBerry in those days. And broadly, if you've got your business email and your personal email on there it's pretty easy to forward an email using your personal account and for whatever reason MI5 weren't bright enough to work this out.

21:05Dan Neidle:We think it was a personal BlackBerry because we know it's a BlackBerry because there's an auto signature but he didn't change the thing it says send from your BlackBerry and we think it's personal because you can see in some of the emails the internal time zone on his BlackBerry is set to British time, but not summertime. So during the summer, all the official emails are automatically on summer emails, but his isn't.

21:25Steph McGovern:So just to understand this then, if you are a government official, are you or are you not allowed to have a personal device that has your personal email on, but also government things on?

21:37Robert Peston:I think now that restriction is in place, but amazingly, it doesn't appear to have been back then.

21:42Steph McGovern:No one would have thought to look at a person to see whether a government official also has a personal email address. Because doesn't everyone, doesn't everyone have a work email and a personal one?

21:53Dan Neidle:Yes, but if they're on separate devices, then it would have been, there would have been trace of him moving it from one to the other, perhaps.

22:02Steph McGovern:Oh, because you think that would make it easier if it's on the same device?

22:05Robert Peston:There'll still be a trace on his personal device. The question is why they would allow a business email to be set up on a personal device. Exactly. Absolutely.

22:12Dan Neidle:We have the Epstein emails in the end because Epstein was really methodical about keeping backup. We see lots of things going back 20 years because we don't know how complete this is. There could be a whole bunch of stuff that we're not seeing.

22:22Steph McGovern:Dan, there's loads more to get into, but let's sit tight for a couple of minutes and go to a quick break.

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23:35Robert Peston:I mean, because anyway, just go back to the Butler one. So the Butler one, you know, includes, you know, this extraordinary line that, you know, we can flog, you know, 20 billion of government assets to get, you know, essentially debt down and give the appearance of borrowing is not as big as it. And that's the kind of stuff, because I remember, you know, I was immersed in, as we both were, covering the financial crisis, there was so much volatility in bond prices, for example, and in the markets at the time. That sort of bit of information would have been price sensitive.

24:10Dan Neidle:Well, and you can see that, so that information is in the middle of the email. And very soon after Mandelson sends the email without mentioning any specifics in it, he just forwards it. Epstein comes back and says, what does saleable assets mean? He's picked up on that. And Mandelson very helpfully makes a suggestion that it means property and real estate, which I think is probably wrong. But it shows that Mandelson really should have realized or did realize that this was of commercial interest to Epstein.

24:37Robert Peston:Can I just ask, because this is the original email leaks back in September of last year related to the sale of a very specific business by Royal Bank of Scotland. This is Semper. This is the business. This was the leak that got Gordon Brown initially very exercised, former prime minister, former chancellor. And this was the leak where he asked the cabinet secretary to investigate, essentially, how serious a breach of rules this was and where the cabinet secretary broadly came back and said nothing to see here.

25:18Dan Neidle:Because it seems that they answered the question they were asked, were there emails from Mandelson to Epstein? They didn't think, were there other ways he could have leaked? We actually still don't really know what happened with Sempra. There's clear discussions between Mandelson and Epstein and Staley about JP Morgan's bid for Sempra.

25:37Robert Peston:So just to remind people what we've said so far, Epstein is getting information he shouldn't be getting from Mandelson. Epstein is very close to senior executives at J.P. Morgan. Royal Bank of Scotland is selling what is business called Sampra. And then tell us, who ends up owning Sampra?

25:58Dan Neidle:J.P. Morgan, buy it. And at one point, Epstein asked Staley if Mandelson has been helpful. and Staley's at JP Morgan at this point. Staley is senior at JP Morgan. We don't know from these emails what Mandelson did, if anything, to help that sale, but he seems to have done something. So that is one of the many gaps we have here.

26:20Steph McGovern:And then what is it that Mandelson's getting out of all of this, apart from luxury holidays?

26:26Dan Neidle:So some people say, ah, it's the$10 ,000 gift to his partner. Loan, loan. Yeah. I apologise deeply. Loan, fully commercial loan. Or it's the mysterious$75 ,000 that were wired to Mandelson in 2003 and 2004, which we still don't know why they were. There's no emails about that. I think that's dead wrong. When Mandelson says it's daft to think I'd be swayed by such trifling amounts of money, he's right. But towards the end of the government, Mandelson starts being even more interested in J.P. Morgan, not to help them out, but trying to get close to them. And within two days of the government falling, you can see in the emails Epstein talking to people trying to find a job for Mandelson.

27:11Dan Neidle:And he succeeds because a couple of months later, there was an offer from Deutsche Bank of two to five million dollars a year, which Mandelson turns down because he thinks it's not enough.

27:23Steph McGovern:Because of everything he's given Epstein over the years.

27:25Dan Neidle:The Mandelson ends up taking a job with a different bank, Lazard, but only one day a week. We don't know how much he earns, but I'm guessing quite a bit. And setting up Global Council, which lets him do this on a larger, more industrial scale. So why did Mandelson do it? There's several possibilities. I think one is simply that it was a corrupt relationship and he got really close to Epstein. If you look at the emails, I've got good friends. I don't know anyone that I am as close to as Mandelson was with Epstein.

27:54Robert Peston:The language of the relationship between Mandelson and Epstein is remarkable. There's one application he says, I think something along the lines of, what is it, nobody matters more to me?

28:09Dan Neidle:Nobody knows me as well as you do. Don't leave.

28:12Robert Peston:And then Epstein says, don't worry, I won't. I'm never going to do that.

28:15Dan Neidle:So Mandelson opens up about his relationship difficulties, about money, about politics, about business. what does what does epstein open up and return to him nothing so almost my favorite bit though

28:29Robert Peston:is i think it's in 2012 it's sort of adolescent because epstein says you've never done anything

28:35Dan Neidle:for me you're always asking that's at the end yes yeah that's kind of towards the end you can see we're we're publishing probably before this goes live a mini mandelson search engine that lets you search the mandelson emails and the epstein files very quickly and efficiently and it contains a bar chart showing you how many emails there were per month and it starts off as nothing it goes kind of peaks the high point of the financial crisis and then it kind of drops down how many

29:00Robert Peston:roughly at the high point of the financial crisis you're putting me on the spot about 200 a month

29:04Dan Neidle:i think wow so so it's it's a lot um you should check how many emails you send your spouse per

29:10Robert Peston:per month yeah yeah but but i think it is just sorry important to make this you know slightly more explicit again. There is overwhelming evidence, you're saying, that, so the government collapses in 2010. And again, there's unbelievably shocking emails about the way that Peter Mandelson is turning against Gordon Brown and is talking to Epstein about how he's got to get Gordon Brown out. I mean, all of this, all of this in terms of betrayal of people you're supposed to be you know loyal to supposed to be friends with supposed to be part of the same team it is all of that stuff is unbelievably

29:58Dan Neidle:shocking i mean yes and and it's also linked to mandelson search for a job because soon after the election i'm going to read this to make sure i get it exactly right soon after the action gordon brown still prime minister there's all the discussions about whether a coalition could be formed and staley just staley at jpm tells mandelson that supporting brown would be bad form commercially which i take to mean we bad for your future job prospects it's unbelievable it's unbelievable but but just to be clear from that point on um mandelson is asking epstein

30:31Robert Peston:for advice for help in getting a very highly paid banking job oh no he doesn't ask he just gets it

30:40Dan Neidle:Epstein is throughout then Epstein is finding jobs for him, mentoring him but there's one where Mandelson writes on his own to get a job, he writes to, I can't remember who it is it's a really crap letter, it's like a poor quality undergraduate, Epstein is much better at this.

30:52Steph McGovern:What about when Epstein is trying to get these jobs for Mandelson, what is he saying to them how is he pitching Mandelson

30:59Dan Neidle:We don't see that you see We don't see the other side of the transaction We see, for example a discussion between Staley and Epstein suggesting that they should speak to Deutsche Bank about Mandelson. But we don't see most of the other stuff that's happening. We don't see how the...

31:19Robert Peston:So just to be clear, because he does end up getting what for most people would be, you know, a pretty highly paid job offer from Deutsche Bank. So Jez Staley does suggest that this is a job that Mandelson could have.

31:36Dan Neidle:Two days after the government falls, Epstein writes to Staley saying, let's talk tomorrow about Petey and Deutsche Bank. Next month, Deutsche Bank makes an offer to Mandelson.

31:47Steph McGovern:You know, I know we're joking about elements of it because it is staggering. No, but I mean, as in, you know, it's quite staggering, isn't it?

31:53Dan Neidle:The only way to deal with it is to joke. And also, we're not talking about all the sexual violence on the other side, partly because I can't deal with that.

32:01Steph McGovern:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously, given what we talk about on this podcast, we're focusing on the business and money side of it. It's awful. It is, it is. Can I just ask you as well, because one of the other things you've done in all of this is you've created your own way of searching the Epstein files, haven't you? So tell us about that. So rather than the kind of basic keyword search that a lot of people are doing, you've created a way of taking this to the next level.

32:24Dan Neidle:So the Department of Justice have all the documents up and you can search. The search is rubbish. You can only search for individual terms and it's very slow. It's a pain. so we found a way to create a our own server with the documents on that let's search much more and were you able to upload every document to your server so there's uh various enterprising hackers have done that and made them available on the internet i don't know if you've you're familiar with torrents the way that movies are pirated on the internet where it's a great way of sharing

32:56Robert Peston:large amounts of documents so it's not all of this stuff has been uploaded it's uploaded it's

33:01Dan Neidle:just a matter of downloading it and you know 1.3 million documents sounds a lot but on a modern computer it's actually nothing and then a little bit of you don't even need coding a little bit of tech knowledge you can set up a search engine for that which is very efficient i'd love to make it public but we can't because it costs too much right and then then that wasn't quite searching individually you kind of feel that you found everything you could you need you need something else so we built an ai search on top of that where the computer runs away and does a bunch of

33:31Steph McGovern:So that means when you, rather than just searching Mandelson's name, for example, you can say things like identify all the instances of market sensitive information being shared.

33:41Dan Neidle:Yeah. And give me a timeline and summary. And you need to be very careful to then check what it does because it's prone to making shit up when it feels like it.

33:47Robert Peston:Yeah. But it gives, I think, in its answers, it will give all the URLs for all relevant documents.

33:52Dan Neidle:It will link, give me the documents so I can just click on them and see them. So you can't verify everything. Yeah, it's like having an incredibly brilliant team of research assistants who are also pathological liars.

34:01Robert Peston:Now, we haven't talked about Prince Andrew. Have you looked at Prince Andrew at all? Or is that just stuff you sort of outside of your...

34:12Dan Neidle:So I shouldn't really be doing this at all because I'm a tax lawyer and I've been drawn to this by accident.

34:17Robert Peston:Sorry!

34:18Dan Neidle:I was going to stop. When I found those emails, I thought I'm just going to publish them. Then I'd interview with Times Radio the next morning when I would, sorry, this is a digression again. So I was going to mention them on this interview with Times Radio and just see if anyone was interested. And Times Radio, because they're the journalists, wrote to Mandelson to get comment. And he said to them, I have no idea what he's talking about, me, and he is a fairly unreliable individual, but up to you, over and out.

34:48Robert Peston:I have to say, among the many unwise things that Peter Maslow said, I think describing you as an unreliable individual is very unreliable.

34:57Dan Neidle:My friends are split on whether that's accurate or not. So after that, I thought, right, I'm done. But kind of working side of the way, something really bugs me is the enablers, all the people who helped out Epstein. And that varies from the people who led the girls into the massages, which I'm going to stay clear of because I can't deal with it. And the lawyers who covered for him. And I started looking at the lawyers who covered him. And this may or may not be arrest his money exclusive or not, depending on how the timing works out. So there's this bizarre exchange where the Fergie has got herself into massive debt.

35:42Dan Neidle:And in particular, she owes money to a former employee, Johnny. And Epstein offers to sort that out. But there's a price.

35:52Robert Peston:And how much debt?

35:54Dan Neidle:You see, the amounts involved are, by the standards of these people, not large. It's about$120 ,000 of debt. Okay, I'd say that's a lot of money. For her, it was a lot of money. For Epstein...

36:03Robert Peston:And how do we know where this debt came from?

36:07Dan Neidle:I'm not sure we do. I think he must have just lent her money, but I don't know. I don't know.

36:12Steph McGovern:And we don't know who that person is who's lent them. We know exactly who he is.

36:15Dan Neidle:This bit's kind of been reported. It's what happens next that hasn't. Right.

36:18Robert Peston:And Johnny is, so who is Johnny exactly?

36:20Dan Neidle:He'd been her, her employee.

36:23Robert Peston:But he lends her money despite the fact that he's her.

36:28Dan Neidle:Yes. And she. This has been reported. It's all very weird. I don't quite know what was going on other than, other than she's clearly really bad with money. So the press had caught on that she had a relationship with Epstein and she'd put out a statement where she distanced herself completely from Epstein, which makes Epstein furious. And Epstein wants to take legal action against the Telegraph.

36:47Robert Peston:And do we know what year this is, roughly?

36:49Dan Neidle:This is in 2011. This is round about October, November 2011. So the Telegraph publishes an article. The Duchess says, this man's horrible enough to do with me. Epstein's furious. Epstein wants to take legal action against the Telegraph. But the Duchess's statement is a problem for him. So his people make clear that Epstein is only going to resolve the Duchess's money troubles if she comes out with a letter in this form. And there's then negotiations between Epstein's British lawyer and a chap called Paul Tweed.

37:22Robert Peston:And which firm does he work for?

37:25Dan Neidle:He worked for a different firm then. Then it was a firm called Johnson's. Now he has his own firm. It's like a boutique libel firm.

37:34Steph McGovern:Can I just ask something? Is Fergie wanting money after she's already put out the statements here is not connected to Epstein.

37:41Dan Neidle:I think she'd been in money trouble for a while. Right. And I think the offer from Epstein to resolve it had been out there for a while. But at this point, Epstein makes clear that she's only getting the help if she provides a letter.

37:54Steph McGovern:And she still wants the help at this point.

37:56Dan Neidle:At no point do they say, we're not having anything from you. You're a disreputable individual. That's not even touched in this correspondence. Her PR people essentially negotiate over the form of the letter. and she's clearly very reluctant to provide this letter. And to me, it is improper.

38:12Steph McGovern:But she still wants the money. Yeah, she still wants the money.

38:17Dan Neidle:It's just about the letter and control over the letter. So this is the letter that Epstein wants her to say. Dear Geoffrey, I wanted you to know with certainty that many things set in the press about you that were attributed to me were either a total malicious fabrication or an outrageous exaggeration. Spoiler, they weren't. She said it. I'm aware that many years ago, wasn't that long ago, you pled guilty to prostitution-related charges. There was never any claim of pedophilia by the authorities, myself, or anyone without thinly veiled motivations. In other words, there were claims. They're just going to gloss over them.

38:51Dan Neidle:And to me, no lawyer should be involved in sending this letter when they know there have absolutely been claims.

38:59Robert Peston:It was just the claims. I thought what he pled guilty was solicitation for prostitution of a minor. That I thought was literally what he pled guilty to. So this is...

39:09Dan Neidle:Yes, but the lawyer sends a letter to the Telegraph which says, well, in medical terms, that's not pedophilia because they weren't prepubescent.

39:19Robert Peston:So even though it was a minor, he is claiming in this letter to the Telegraph...

39:24Dan Neidle:In this really poor quality letter to the Telegraph, which I'm pretty sure had zero effect. But actually that is just the top of it because that was what was prosecuted in the amazingly scandalous sweetheart deal he got in Florida. there were lots of other allegations in fact in fact a court in new york when you if you're a sex offender and you move to new york there's a special procedure where a court makes a decision as to how dangerous you are and puts restrictions on you and the court the new york court accepted a bunch of other allegations so it wasn't just that and the lawyers should have known that and the whole thing is shocking and uh i'm gonna write about this i asked i asked the lawyer for comment

39:59Robert Peston:he didn't reply and then what so what is the end of all of this does she does she write the letter

40:05Dan Neidle:That is not entirely clear.

40:07Robert Peston:So we don't know. So do we know what happened to the debt? Do we, I mean, do we, I mean, it's the end of the story. We don't know.

40:12Dan Neidle:Sadly, with a lot of this, you're seeing bits and pieces here and there. You're not seeing the full, you're not seeing the full picture. It's unbelievable.

40:19Robert Peston:But we do know that much later, she is still, you know, maintaining contact, isn't she?

40:28Dan Neidle:Yeah, it's kind of funny. He is never rude about Peter Mandelson. He refers to him in the way that you'd refer to a lackey. Not that either of you have lackeys, but he refers to him, let's get Mandelson onto this, he says at one point. But he never says anything that suggests he doesn't respect Mandelson. But it's pretty clear he doesn't respect the Duchess or the Duke. Why? What does he say? I can't remember the exact word, but he clearly refers to them as money grabbing. Yeah, he doesn't have respect for them and you can see why. but clearly he regards them as valuable anyway. Fascinating.

41:05Steph McGovern:There's so much more that's going to come out of this as well, isn't there? I mean, we've only scratched the surface and I think it's just worth reminding everyone as well is this would not have all come out if it wasn't for the bravery of the survivors and all of this who've pushed it out there like it is thanks to them.

41:21Dan Neidle:They spent years after the Florida prosecutor let him off, they spent years making a fuss about this, trying to get it on the agenda.

41:29Robert Peston:Can I make sort of one general point, which I don't know if you had or thought about? I mean, you've obviously, partly by reasons of accident, focused on particular individuals. So, you know, Mandelson obviously of enormous interest in the UK. I've just been talking about Sarah Ferguson. And one of the things that particularly my overseas friends say to me is it is sort of disgraceful that people in America who also were close to Epstein seem to have so far at least sort of got away with it. So, you know, we've got the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, yesterday, you know, giving evidence about the fact that in 2012, he has lunch with his family on Epstein's island.

42:29Robert Peston:And it's absolutely contradicting what he'd earlier said, which is that he'd broken off all contact with Epstein years earlier and before it was clear that Epstein was a paedophile. And yet they don't appear to be. I mean, you know, House of Representatives, some members there are angry, but they don't appear to be any consequences for Lutnick. He's still got this very powerful job within Trump's administration. Yeah.

42:58Steph McGovern:And even Trump's press secretaries come out and said they support Lutnik as well. There's a double thing there, isn't there, of them getting the backing from Trump as to?

43:07Robert Peston:And of course, it's widely believed that there are unpublished. I mean, just I want to ask you a question. Do you believe that there is a large number of documents relating to Trump and Epstein that have been withheld?

43:22Dan Neidle:No idea. Yeah.

43:23Robert Peston:And there's no way with your search engine that you can sort of see. I was just wondering whether with really clever AI, it would be possible to sort of, in a sense, see when things have been removed or, you know, patterns of removal. One thing that's pretty important to point out about the huge numbers of documents in the Epstein files is just because your name is there doesn't necessarily mean that you've done the thing wrong.

43:52Dan Neidle:That may be possible. So for example, there are emails involving Mandelson where they successfully redact his name and his email address. But Mandelson's slightly unusual in having used a BlackBerry and left the auto signature. And the auto signatures on BlackBerry differ slightly between models. So if you search for emails which have Mandelson's exact BlackBerry auto signature, but not Mandelson's name, you find some other Mandelson emails. So with Mandelson, you can do that. Could you perform a similar exercise and try and find Trump related things? Maybe, but I'm desperately backpedaling trying to get out of this and do my normal stuff.

44:29Dan Neidle:I want to get back to the day job.

44:31Steph McGovern:And we should let you do that. But Dan, thank you so much as ever for coming in to talk to us.

44:35Dan Neidle:Shocking and gripping.

44:36Steph McGovern:Yeah, really. But, you know, thanks for what you've done on it as well, because it's really important to get all this out there.

44:41Dan Neidle:Taxpolicy.org.uk, where we host the documents. By the time you hear this, probably there will be a Mandelson search engine. Yes. Taxpolicy.org.uk.

44:50Robert Peston:I think you're going to be swamped. You are. Swamped with people trying to use it, so the system doesn't crash. But as always, Dan, thank you so much for joining us.

44:58Steph McGovern:Yeah, thank you. And bye-bye from all of us. Goodbye.

45:06make things similar