Former British ambassador to the US Lord Peter Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party after newly released US documents revived scrutiny of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson, who was dismissed from his post in Washington last year following revelations about a ten-page “love” letter to his “best pal” Epstein, announced on Sunday that he was stepping down from party membership to avoid causing “further embarrassment.”

In a letter to Labour’s general secretary, Hollie Ridley, Mandelson denied any wrongdoing and said he believed allegations that Epstein made financial payments to him more than 20 years ago were “false,”citing his lack of any record or recollection of receiving the money.

“While investigating these matters, I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party and am therefore stepping down from membership,” he wrote. Mandelson also reiterated an apology to Epstein’s victims, saying their voices “should have been heard long before now.”

The US Department of Justice released a new tranche of documents on Friday under legislation mandating the disclosure of federal records linked to Epstein. The files include bank statements that appear to show three separate payments of $25,000 from Epstein’s JP Morgan accounts to bank accounts linked to Mandelson between 2003 and 2004.

The documents also include emails and photographs involving Mandelson, including redacted images showing him standing beside an unidentified woman. Mandelson said he could not place the location or circumstances in which the images were taken. The Justice Department cautioned that the files were released without context and that being named in them does not automatically imply criminal wrongdoing.

Mandelson was removed from his post as Britain’s ambassador to the United States last year after earlier disclosures revealed continued contact with Epstein following the financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor. He has previously said he deeply regretted maintaining the relationship and described Epstein as a “charismatic criminal liar.”

The latest revelations, which also include new documents and photographs featuring former Prince Andrew, have triggered renewed political backlash in London. A Conservative Party spokesperson accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to expel the “completely disgraced” Mandelson sooner. Liberal Democrat and Labour figures have also said Mandelson, Prince Andrew, and anyone with relevant knowledge of Epstein’s activities have a moral obligation to share any information they possess with US authorities.

https://www.rt.com/news/631845-uk-mandelson-resigns-epstein/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODA-sik4tLg

Canada's Mark Carney came out and said, yeah the whole system is rigged and we've been lying to you all along. Garland Nixon on the implications of the Epstein Files....

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Swu3qYT7I

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Washington: Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify in the House oversight committee’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, capitulating to the demands of the panel’s Republican chair days before the House was set to vote to hold the couple in criminal contempt of Congress.

For months, the Clintons were adamant that they would not comply with subpoenas from congressman James Comer, the panel’s Republican chair, that they described as invalid and legally unenforceable. They accused Comer of being part of a plot to target them as US President Donald Trump’s political adversaries and promised to fight him on the issue for as long as it took.

But after some Democrats on the panel joined Republicans in a vote to recommend charging them with criminal contempt, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Department of Justice for prosecution, the Clintons ultimately waved the white flag and agreed to fully comply with Comer’s demands.

In an email sent to Comer on Monday evening (Tuesday AEDT), attorneys for the Clintons said their clients would “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates” and asked that the House not move forward with a contempt vote, which had been slated for Wednesday.

“They negotiated in good faith. You did not,” spokespeople for the Clintons said in a statement. “They told under oath what they know, but you did not care. But the former president and former secretary of state will be there.”

For Bill Clinton to testify in the Epstein investigation would be nearly unprecedented. No former president has appeared before Congress since 1983, when Gerald Ford did so to discuss the celebration of the 1987 bicentennial of the enactment of the Constitution. When Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 by the select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol – after he had left office – he sued the panel to try to block it. The panel ultimately withdrew the subpoena.

The Clintons’ move capped a months-long battle between them and Comer. It was a victory for the Republican chair’s efforts to shift the focus of his panel’s Epstein investigation away from Trump’s ties to Epstein and the president’s administration’s handling of the matter, and onto prominent Democrats who once associated with the disgraced financier and his long-time companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.

In a letter on Saturday to Comer, obtained by The New York Times, Bill Clinton’s lawyers tried one more time to put some guardrails on potential interviews with the Clintons. They said Bill Clinton would agree to sit for a four-hour transcribed interview with the entire committee – something he had previously described as an inappropriate and unprecedented request to make of a former president.

The lawyers asked that Hillary Clinton, who has said she never met or spoke to Epstein, be allowed to make a sworn declaration instead of testifying. But they said that she, too, would submit to an in-person interview if the committee insisted on it, “with appropriate adjustments for the paucity of information she has to offer in this matter”, according to the letter.

But Comer flatly rejected the offer, calling it “unreasonable” and arguing that four hours of testimony from Bill Clinton was inadequate given that he was a “loquacious individual” who might seek to run out the clock.

“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Comer wrote in a letter sent to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday that was also obtained by the Times.

In that letter, Comer also rejected the demand from Bill Clinton that the scope of the interview be limited to matters related to Epstein. Comer said the former president “likely has an artificially narrow definition in mind” of what matters would be related to the Epstein investigation.

Comer said he had concerns that Clinton would refuse to answer questions about “his personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, ways in which they sought to curry favour with powerful individuals and alleged efforts to utilise his power and influence after his presidency to kill negative news stories about Jeffrey Epstein”.

In response to Comer’s letter, the Clintons on Monday evening agreed to all of Comer’s demands, removing any time limit on the deposition of Bill Clinton or on the range of topics that Republicans could ask him about.

The only point of negotiation that Comer had previously been amenable to was conducting the interviews in New York, where the Clintons live and work.

Bill Clinton was acquainted with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, but has said he never visited Epstein’s private island and cut off contact with him two decades ago. Clinton took four international trips on Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003, according to flight logs.

While some House Democrats last month voted with Republicans to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress, others expressed disgust at the entire situation, and in particular about the inclusion of Hillary Clinton.

“I’m not seeing anything to suggest she ought to be a part of this in any way,” congressman Kweisi Mfume said at a hearing last month. He noted that it looked like the former secretary of state had been included because “we want to dust her up a bit if we get her before this committee”.

The offer from the Clintons represented a total surrender after they made a defiant stand just weeks ago, vowing to fight back against an investigation they said was unfairly targeting them and holding them to a different standard from others.

“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences,” the Clintons wrote in a lengthy letter to Comer on January 13. “For us, now is that time.”

Up to the final moment, the Clintons had tried to negotiate with the House oversight committee behind the scenes to find a way for Comer to spare them the contempt vote and lift the subpoenas. They said Comer and the top Democrat on the panel could interview Bill Clinton under oath, an offer that the chair also rejected, because he insisted the former president appear before the entire committee for an open-ended, transcribed interview.

For the Clintons, the entire saga was a continuation of the Republican assault on them that has been the background noise of their entire life on the national political stage.

n the January letter, the Clintons accused Comer of potentially bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a politically driven process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment”.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/clintons-raise-white-flag-after-a-months-long-battle-not-to-testify-on-epstein-20260203-p5nz6k.html

ONE OF THE MAJOR IMPLICATION COMES FROM THE INTERVIEW OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN BY STEVE BANNON.... THERE, EPSTEIN BLAMES BILL CLINTON FOR HAVING SETUP THE SUBPRIME SAGA THAT CREATED THE 2008 FINIANCIAL CRISIS... SEE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Swu3qYT7I

BREAKING! Epstein Files SHOCKING Admission...It Gets WORSE!

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

GUSNOTE: BILL CLINTON WAS ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EXPANSION OF NATO CLOSER AND CLOSER TO RUSSIA, LEADING TO RUSSIA HAVING TO DEFEND THE RUSSIANS IN THE DONBASS REGION IN 2022...

Convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein advised former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to look into working with controversial tech company Palantir, according to audio released by the US Department of Justice.

In a recording of a discussion between the two men, which reportedly took place in February 2013, Epstein refers to an unnamed third person suggesting there were "two cyber companies" to "look at".

"I've never met Peter Thiel. And everybody says he sort of jumps around and acts really strange, like he's on drugs," Epstein tells Barak of the co-founder of Palantir, with the former Israeli prime minister agreeing.

"However, he has a company called Palantir... so he thought that Peter would put you on the board of Palantir... he's going to come here next week so I wanted to talk to him, if I talk to you."

Epstein was found dead in his New York City jail cell in 2019. Thousands of the late financier's emails have been released amid congressional pressure. Some have exposed correspondence that appears to show him working as a private diplomat and intelligence fixer for a range of political figures.

Barak, who was prime minister between 1999 and 2001, partnered with Epstein in 2015 - long after he was first convicted as a sex offender - to fund Reporty Homeland Security, a startup chaired by Barak and now renamed Carbyne. 

Despite downplaying his relationship with Epstein in a roundtable discussion with the New York Times last month, Ehud Barak's name brings up 4,078 results in the Epstein files.

In December 2016, Richard Kahn, Epstein's accountant, forwarded a message from David Fiszel, a hedge fund manager, who says that a meeting Palantir had with US President-elect Donald Trump was "Huge for the company".

Kahn tells Epstein that Fiszel can get him shares in the tech company at what "seems like" a 50 percent discount.

Palantir, which specialises in AI-powered military and surveillance technology, would open a headquarters in Tel Aviv in 2015 and has played a vital role in many of Israel's military operations in the occupied territories and neighbouring states.

Both Thiel and the company have been outspoken in their support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, announcing in a letter to shareholders a month after the war began in October 2023 that they were "one of a few companies in the world to stand up and announce our support for Israel, which remains steadfast."

According to writer Michael Steinberger, Israel deepened its use of the company’s technology after it launched the war on Gaza in October 2023, deploying it in numerous operations.

A report produced by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese last July said there "are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision making".

Palantir software was used by Israel in its 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon, according to a book by Alex Karp, another co-founder of the company.

On 17 September 2024, thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members, including civilians not involved in any armed activity, were detonated across Lebanon.

Many showed “error” messages and vibrated loudly prior to exploding, luring Hezbollah members or, in some cases, their family members to stand close by at the point of detonation.

The next day more communication devices exploded, including at public funerals of Hezbollah members and civilians who had been killed the previous day.

While many Israeli figures celebrated, praised and even joked about the attacks, United Nations experts called them a “terrifying” violation of international law.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/epstein-advised-former-israeli-prime-minister-ehud-barak-look-palantir

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1FPSxdytJM

Jeffery Epstein’s Israel connections are very apparent in the latest release of the Epstein files. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks...

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJdyOFiIRyY

George Galloway, the UK politician and broadcaster, is now in self-imposed exile after he and his wife were held at gunpoint in a British airport and interrogated over their supposed connections to Russia and China.

That means he is currently in Shanghai, China doing his show and living his life. Will it be for good?

I sat down with Mr Galloway in the Reports on China studio to ask him this and other questions, all of which were suggested by you guys, our followers!

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.