The UK government is set to unseal a first batch of key documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the U.S., MPs were told Monday.

The disclosure, set for ‘early March,’ follows a Commons motion ordering the release of files related to Mandelson’s vetting for the post and comes in the wake of his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

‘The government expects to be able to publish the first tranche of documents very shortly, in early March,’ Darren Jones, chief secretary to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, told the House of Commons.

‘I should, however, inform the House that it remains the case that a subset of this first tranche of documents is currently subject to the ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation,’ he said.

Jones added that ‘a small portion of that material engages matters of national security or international relations’ and would be handled through the Intelligence and Security Committee, in line with the will of the House.

As previously reported by Fox News Digital, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson confirmed in a statement Monday that officers had arrested a 72-year-old man at an address in Camden and took him to a London police station for questioning.

The arrest follows revelations about Mandelson’s links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and comes days after former Prince Andrew was detained.

The investigation relates to allegations that Mandelson shared confidential government information with Epstein while serving as business secretary.

Police had opened a criminal inquiry after the government passed on communications between the former ambassador and the disgraced financier.

Emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice also appeared to show Mandelson sharing market-sensitive information with Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis.

Mandelson has denied wrongdoing and said he does not recall the alleged disclosures and apologized to Epstein’s victims for maintaining contact with him after his conviction.

On Feb. 4, Starmer told the Commons: ‘I’m as angry as anyone about what Mandelson has been up to. The disclosures … are utterly shocking and appalling. He has betrayed our country. He has lied repeatedly. He is responsible for a litany of deceit.’

Starmer later said that if he had known then what he knows now, Mandelson ‘would never have been anywhere near government.’

Mandelson, an architect of New Labour, was appointed U.S. ambassador before being dismissed in September 2025 as scrutiny over his links to Epstein intensified. 

He resigned from the Labour Party and stepped down from the House of Lords.

As U.S. ambassador, Mandelson scored an early victory by ensuring Britain was the first country to agree to a deal with the U.S. to lower some of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but was fired a few months later.

Starmer has also faced calls to step down over Mandelson’s appointment, Reuters reported.

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A deadly confrontation at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend is the latest in a string of high-profile security incidents involving President Donald Trump, as former Secret Service officials warn that low-tech, lone actors now pose one of the toughest challenges to presidential protection.

‘It should be quite clear to all of us by now that Trump is the most threatened president in the history of the U.S.,’ former Secret Service agent William ‘Bill’ Gage told Fox News Digital Monday, pointing to multiple high-profile incidents in recent years. Unlike past presidencies, where threat levels often subsided over time, Gage said, ‘the longer he’s president, the more these attacks keep happening.’

Gage said the most difficult cases to prevent are often the least sophisticated. The recent incidents, he noted, were ‘super low-tech attacks by people with zero training,’ using rudimentary weapons. ‘If you were standing behind them in line at Starbucks, you wouldn’t have given them a second look,’ he said.

Gage said the threat landscape shifted over the course of his 12-year career as a Secret Service agent. When he joined the Secret Service in 2002, he said the agency was moving away from what he described as the traditional ‘lone gunman’ model — figures like Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated John F. Kennedy, or international militants such as ‘Carlos the Jackal,’ one of the world’s most wanted terrorists in the ’70s and 80s — and adapting to a post-9/11 world focused on coordinated terrorist networks like al Qaeda and later ISIS.

‘But if you look at Butler and the two incidents at Mar-a-Lago, those were super low-tech attacks,’ Gage said. ‘The low-tech actors are the ones that tend to slip through the cracks.’

He also warned of a potential copycat effect when details of such incidents become public. 

‘If it were up to the Secret Service, they would never report any of these incidents ever,’ Gage said, arguing that widespread coverage allows others to ‘study what happened’ and attempt to refine it. 

In today’s hyperconnected political climate, he said, that dynamic adds another layer of complexity for agents trying to stop the next threat before it materializes.

In the early hours of Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, a 21-year-old man identified as Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina was shot and killed by U.S. Secret Service agents and a local sheriff’s deputy after entering the secure perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Authorities say Martin drove through the north gate carrying a shotgun and a gasoline can. After being ordered to drop both, he dropped the can but raised the shotgun toward officers, who fired and killed him at the scene. Trump and First lady Melania Trump were in Washington at the time.

The incident marked the third highly publicized security encounter involving Trump in less than two years. In July 2024, a gunman opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing Trump’s ear and killing an attendee before being shot by a Secret Service sniper. In September 2024, a man armed with a rifle was confronted by agents near Trump’s golf course while he was playing; that suspect was later convicted on attempted assassination charges.

While the incidents have drawn intense attention, former Deputy Assistant Director Don Mihalek said the latest Mar-a-Lago intrusion does not necessarily signal a breakdown in protective systems.

‘He got through an exterior gate of an active club,’ Mihalek told Fox News Digital. ‘This wasn’t someone reaching the president’s residence.’ Agents confronted the suspect within seconds, he said, describing the rapid response as evidence that overlapping security layers functioned as designed.

Mihalek said presidential protection relies on multiple rings of security because outer perimeters at properties like Mar-a-Lago cannot be sealed in the same way as the White House. ‘If he ended up in the president’s house on Mar-a-Lago, that might be a different conversation,’ he said.

He also cautioned against viewing recent incidents in isolation, noting that presidents routinely face roughly 2,000 threats per year, most of which are mitigated before the public ever becomes aware of them. ‘These just happen to be very public instances,’ Mihalek said, arguing that the social media era amplifies perceptions of escalation.

Mihalek pointed to last summer’s rally shooting in Butler as an example of how early intervention can be decisive, noting that local law enforcement had reportedly identified the suspect prior to the attack. ‘If somebody had walked up and said, ‘Hey, who are you?’ we wouldn’t be talking about Butler,’ he said.

As Trump prepares to address Congress at the State of the Union, both former officials said the security posture at the Capitol is unlikely to change in response to the weekend incident.

The annual address is designated a National Special Security Event — the highest level of federal security planning — triggering coordination among the Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, War Department and other agencies. The designation allows for expanded perimeter controls, airspace restrictions and continuity-of-government planning.

Gage, who previously led advance planning for State of the Union addresses, said the event operates under a well-established security ‘blueprint’ built to account for worst-case scenarios. ‘There’s really no way to increase it anymore,’ he said.

Both former officials said the defining challenge for presidential protection today is unpredictability: individuals with minimal training, rudimentary weapons and the ability to find reinforcement online. Unlike organized extremist networks, such actors may leave few detectable signals before acting.

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Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., is using President Donald Trump’s State of the Union to send a message to critics of an X post he made about choosing ‘between dogs and Muslims.’

Fine’s guest to Trump’s primetime address will be his father, Alan Fine, along with his father’s seeing-eye service dog, Sadie. 

‘I think it’s also important, given the issues that I burst into the public consciousness last week, to talk about the importance of our dogs as Americans,’ Fine told Fox News Digital on Monday. ‘My father’s seeing-eye dog is part of our family and allows him to live his life, and I’m going to fight like hell against anyone who wants to take it away.’

The dog will be outfitted with a shirt that reads, ‘Don’t tread on me,’ which has become Fine’s rallying cry against the outpouring of rage from Democrats over his controversial X post.

Last week, Fine shared a screenshot from X of Palestinian Muslim activist Nerdeen Kiswani writing, ‘Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.’

Fine wrote on the platform in response, ‘If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.’

It prompted an outpouring of criticism from House Democrats, with calls ranging from a censure to Fine’s outright ouster from Congress.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on X, ‘House Democrats will not let the racist and bigoted behavior of Randy Fine go unchecked. Accountability is coming to all of these sick extremists when the gavels change hands in November, if not sooner.’

The Florida Republican responded to the criticism by questioning the lack of widespread outrage when a member of the House Democratic Caucus, nonvoting Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I., was found to have been texting Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing, and when Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., was accused of misusing COVID-19 pandemic funds.

‘I think the same people that don’t have a problem with a member of Congress texting Jeffrey Epstein, the same members of Congress who don’t have a problem with a member who stole $5 million of money that was supposed to go to people suffering from natural disasters … somehow have a problem with a member of Congress who says Americans have a right to have a dog and if people don’t like it, they can leave,’ Fine said. ‘So they can shove it.’

Kiswani has since posted that her initial comment was meant to be a joke and called Fine’s X post ‘genocidal.’

But he has dug in since then, even introducing a resolution to Congress called the ‘Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act.’

His father, Alan Fine, said he was eager to see his son on the House floor as a member of Congress.

‘I’m actually more excited to be here to watch my son,’ he said. ‘More to see him than the president, to be quite honest. I guess that’s because I’m a Jewish father.’

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A Republican lawmaker is teaming up with outspoken detransitioner Chloe Cole to push federal legislation that would block gender-related medical procedures for minors, saying that children are being rushed into receiving treatments with life-altering results.

The Chloe Cole Act is being introduced on Monday as federal legislation aimed at protecting minors from gender-related medical procedures. 

Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., who is behind the bill, has a medical degree and is sounding the alarm over the impact that gender-related treatments can have on minors. The congressman told Fox News Digital that his bill will not only protect minors from these treatments, but will also give children and parents the right to hold medical professionals accountable in court.

‘We know that in the last 15 years, the transgender movement has convinced tens of thousands of boys and girls that they are born in the wrong body…. And then a chain of transgender clinics has exploited these kids for the ideology and for the profit and really done permanent damage to the health of those kids with wrong sex hormones, puberty blockers and even mutilating surgeries,’ Onder told Fox News Digital.

The congressman said the Chloe Cole Act arises from President Donald Trump’s January 2025 order titled, ‘Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.’ The order encouraged lawmakers to ‘work to draft, propose, and promote legislation to enact a private right of action for children and the parents of children whose healthy body parts have been damaged by medical professionals practicing chemical and surgical mutilation.’ The order noted that statutes of limitations for these cases should be ‘lengthy.’

Cole, who has become a prominent detransition advocate, told Fox News Digital that the legislation is ‘a vital step in our mission to ensure that no minor in America ever endures the kind of lasting, irreparable damage I experienced.’

‘While we’ve made significant strides in raising awareness and enacting protections in recent years, the fight is far from over. Too many children remain at risk of irreversible harm from puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures pushed on them before they can fully understand the consequences,’ Cole said in a statement provided exclusively to Fox News Digital.

‘We must finish what we’ve started and safeguard the next generation from these experimental and barbaric treatments,’ she added.

A recent legal judgment in New York has provided advocates like Cole some hope in holding medical providers accountable. Recently, a jury awarded 22-year-old Fox Varian $2 million in damages after she sued a plastic surgeon who performed a double mastectomy on her when she was a teenager. Varian’s lawsuit was also aimed at her psychologist. The New York Times noted that Varian claimed the 2019 double mastectomy left her disfigured. Varian, like Cole, was born female and at one point identified as a man. She is now undergoing the detransition process.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has previously expressed support for providing minors with gender-related medical treatment.

‘The AAP and other major medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the World Health Organization — support giving transgender adolescents access to the health care they need,’ a 2023 statement from the AAP read. ‘The AAP opposes any laws or regulations that discriminate against transgender and gender-diverse individuals, or that interfere in the doctor-patient relationship.’

Cole celebrated the judgment, and said in a Fox News Digital op-ed: ‘There are so many other young people like us. We were lied to by doctors, nurses and therapists when we were vulnerable and confused children. They did irreversible harm to our bodies and minds, making a mockery of the medical profession. They should absolutely be held accountable for sacrificing us in service to radical transgender ideology.’

In her op-ed, Cole brought up a subject that Onder also touched on during his interview with Fox News Digital: the prevalence of medical professionals warning parents that their child could harm themselves or even commit suicide if they are not allowed to undergo the procedures.

‘Those parents are being lied to,’ Onder said. ‘The words I hear quoted over and over again, by Chloe, by Luka Hein, by others, is that their parents were told, ‘Would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?’ implying that the risk of suicide is approaching 100%, but nothing could be further from the truth. That is an utter lie,’ Onder said.

The congressman lambasted the industry behind gender-related medical procedures, wondering if children were being pushed into the surgeries because of ‘sick ideology’ or a ‘desire for profit.’

‘Parents are being lied to, the transgender clinics and the transgender doctors are making off with a lot of money. It’s really a despicable development in American medicine. And as a physician, I look forward to the day where it’s in our rearview mirror and no longer are kids being exploited,’ the congressman added.

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