\u201cI just feel two things now,\u201d Mandelson said. \u201cOne, I feel a tremendous sense, a profound sense of sympathy for those people, those women, who suffered as a result of his behavior and his illegal criminal activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecondly, I regret very, very deeply indeed carrying on that association with him for far longer than I should have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mandelson, a veteran of Tony Blair\u2019s government who was a Labour MP at the time of the 2003 letter, said he regretted \u201cvery much\u201d falling for Epstein\u2019s \u201clies\u201d and \u201caccepted assurances that he had given me about his indictment \u2026 at face value.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt it like an albatross around my neck since his death,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mandelson said he \u201cnever saw the wrongdoing\u201d nor \u201cany evidence of criminal activity\u201d on the part of Epstein, who \u201cnever sought and nor did he offer\u201d any introductions to women.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps it\u2019s because I am a gay man,\u201d Mandelson said. \u201cWhen I was associating with him those years ago, as I did with my then-partner and now husband Reinaldo, we never, ever saw any evidence or sign of this activity which has since come to light.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI just feel two things now,\u201d Mandelson said. \u201cOne, I feel a tremendous sense, a profound sense of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,1193,32,393,4884,2348,807,1144,28300,712,16,15,49,1764,1202],"class_list":{"0":"post-412958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-british-politics","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-history","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-peter-mandelson","18":"tag-scotland","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-wales","23":"tag-westminster-bubble"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115179663255891380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}