Trump’s team repeatedly tried to intervene over Mandelson appointment

LONDON — Senior members of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team attempted on more than one occasion to intervene in Keir Starmer’s decision in 2024 to remove Karen Pierce as ambassador and replace her with Peter Mandelson, according to a former Trump official and a serving U.K. official.

Trump’s aides told Starmer’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and his then-Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney that they wanted Pierce to remain in post during a meeting in Palm Beach in early December 2024, the officials told POLITICO.

Later the same month, people working on the transition placed a call to Powell and told him they were unhappy at the treatment of Pierce and that they did not like that Mandelson had been picked, according to the same former Trump official.

Trump’s aides were particularly exercised that Mandelson could be made ambassador after he had made disparaging public remarks about the president in the past, according to both officials. 

The details about the interaction between the two leaders’ teams have not previously been reported and underscore the disquiet within the president’s inner circle about one of Starmer’s first major foreign policy decisions on becoming prime minister — and a juncture at which his key aides could have urged Starmer to think again. 

Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was among those wary of Mandelson, according to the former U.S. official already cited and a second official still serving in the administration, with one saying she saw him as “arrogant” and rude to staff.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “This is an inaccurate representation of this meeting and what was said.” Wiles had no comment.

Downing Street declined to comment.

Mandelson was sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Washington last September over his past friendship with the late convicted sex offender Epstein, but further revelations from documents released in the U.S. prompted a police investigation into his conduct, leading to his arrest in February. 

Mandelson has not been charged, and his lawyers have said he is cooperating with the investigation. He has previously apologized “unequivocally” for his association with Epstein and “to the women and girls that suffered.”

‘Common knowledge’

The serving Trump administration official, who like others in this piece was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said it was “common knowledge” that “no one was particularly favorable to him [Mandelson], really primarily because he’d been openly nasty about the president… [He had] a bad history of being openly nasty so why would he be a preferred ambassador?”

It’s not clear how explicitly any concerns were relayed at the time to Starmer, who is facing renewed questions about his decision to hire Mandelson following the release of internal government documents on the vetting process. 

U.K. National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell is pictured leaving Downing Street in London on Oct. 24, 2025. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

The files published last week showed that Powell had misgivings about Mandelson and called the appointment process “weirdly rushed.”

The former minister of the New Labour years was ultimately fired from the job in September 2025 after the true extent of his relationship with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein became clear, raising questions about Starmer’s judgement.

It has previously been reported that Trump communicated reservations about Mandelson in a November 2024 phone call, but accounts of the conversation in Florida and subsequent call suggest Starmer received repeated U.S. representations against his pick for envoy.

Then-Ambassador Pierce and senior U.K. embassy aide Senay Bulbul, both of whom were credited with building good links with MAGA figures, were also in attendance at the Palm Beach meeting.

Pierce herself discussed the diplomatic matter with Mike Waltz, who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser, but did not attempt to escalate any concerns as a result of their conversation, an email in the tranche of documents shows.

McSweeney, a close ally of Mandelson, remained an advocate for the Labour veteran long after the meeting and even until the day he was fired, according to contemporary accounts. McSweeney could not be reached for comment.

By January 2025, any major concerns appear to have been allayed. An email from Olly Robbins, the top civil servant at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, to Downing Street indicated that Pierce had spoken to Waltz and there was “no suggestion that Peter’s nomination was an issue” for Trump. 

Starmer apologized again for the debacle last week, saying “it was me that made a mistake” in deciding that the former business secretary should become the U.K.’s top diplomat in Washington.