Your friends love you, Mandelson told Epstein after arrest

The British ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, told Jeffrey Epstein to "fight for early release" and "your friends stay with you and love you" when the disgraced financier was facing charges of procuring a child for prostitution, according to leaked emails.

- Rowena Mason

The emails, first published by the Sun after circulating in Washington DC, will put further pressure on Mandelson after he admitted on Tuesday that more "very embarrassing" details of his friendship with Epstein were likely to emerge but insisted he had never seen any "wrongdoing".

In an email from June 2008, which was not disputed by his spokesperson, Mandelson wrote to Epstein: "I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.

"I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can." It continued: "Everything can be turned into an opportunity and that you will come through it and be stronger for it." The friendship between the two men has come back under the spotlight after Democratic members of the US House oversight committee released Epstein's 50th "birthday book", in which Mandelson called him "my best pal" in a handwritten note.

The Telegraph reported that when Mandelson was business secretary in 2010, he allowed Epstein to help broker a deal for JP Morgan to buy part of a commodities firm from the UK government-owned RBS bank - after the financier's release from jail.

No 10 stood fully behind Mandelson yesterday, saying he had been fully security checked before taking up the role and was the right person for the job.