PRINCE
ANDREW
EPSTEIN, MAXWELL
AND
THE PALACE
NIGEL CAWTHORNE
gibson square
Also by Nigel Cawthorne
Prince Philip
I Know I Am Rude, but I Like It
Call Me Diana
The Princess of Wales on the Princess of Wale s
This first edition published by Gibson Square.
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Copyright by Nigel Cawthorne. The right of Nigel Cawthorne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Prince Andrew by Donald Edgar, Prince Andrew: Warrior Prince by Graham and Heather Fisher, Andrew: The Playboy Prince by Andrew Morton and Mick Seamark, Prince Andrew by Nicholas Courtney, are gratefully acknowledged. Picture credits: Anwar Hussein, Getty, BBC. Copyright holders are urged to come forward.
A legal bombshell
On Monday 9 August 2021, a legal bombshell exploded at the gates of Buckingham Palace. On that day, Virginia Roberts Giuffre filed a lawsuit for sexual misconduct in a New York State court in New York against Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeths second oldest son. It was an extraordinary moment. In the long history of the British monarchy since 1066, there was no case like it. Never before had a British royal been challenged on such charges. By extension, the most respected royal family in the world was all of a sudden embroiled in allegations of sordid and legally reprehensible acts, behaviour not usually associated with the family of a head of state.
Allegations made by Giuffre had circulated in the press since early 2015 and consistently been denied as untrue by the prince and his close friend Ghislaine Maxwell. Even so, Giuffres fifteen-page-long claims that she submitted to Judge Lewis A. Kaplans court were hair-raising. Giuffre accused Andrew of sexually abusing her at convicted-paedophile Jeffrey Epsteins mansion in Manhattan and at other locations in 2001 when she was 17. Giuffre stated she was compelled by express or implied threats by Epstein, [Ghislaine] Maxwell, and/or Prince Andrew to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew, and feared death or physical injury to herself or another and other repercussions for disobeying Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew due to their powerful connections, wealth and authority. It further alleged that the prince knew she was a sex-trafficking victim and that she has sufferedand continues to suffersignificant emotional and psychological distress and harm.
Normally, Giuffres civil claims against the prince would have floundered after the lapse of some twenty years under applicable statutes of limitations. But New York State passed the Child Victims Act in 2019 that gave survivors of sexual abuse a one-year window to file a civil case no matter how long ago they were abused. Following the corona lockdowns, its deadline had been extended and Giuffres explosive legal allegations were dramatically lodged only days before the window finally closed on bringing litigation.
Previously, Andrew had absolutely and categorically denied having sex with Giuffre from when this was first reported and Buckingham Palace called her statements false and without foundation. But their response to the legal appeared to cause great confusion. The day after the filing, Andrew left his Windsor home to join the Queen and her advisors at Balmoral, his mothers 50,000 acre estate in Scotland where she was on holiday.
When Giuffres legal team sought to serve papers on the prince at his residence, Royal Lodge in Windsor, the full-time security staff on duty refused to accept them. They had also sent them to his lawyers and posted them to him by royal mail, on the assumption that it would have no trouble delivering the papers to the senior royal.
The princes refusal to accept the papers created a major standoff between the Queens second son and the US legal system. It appeared to some observers as if he was above US law. David Boies, the star lawyer representing Giuffe, did not take kindly to the royals cat-and-mouse game and warned, ignore the courts at your peril, adding, It would be very ill-advised for Prince Andrew to ignore judicial process.
While multiple attempts were made, Andrew was at the Queens 50,000-acre Balmoral estate with his ex-wife the Duchess of York some five hundred miles away. It was reportedly said, Andrew was going stir-crazy inside Royal Lodge for the past few weeks. He wasnt going horse riding and couldnt step outside because of attempts to serve him with the legal papers. He knows he is far safer up at Balmoral.
The direct aftermath of the bombshell raised many questions, including ones that were constitutional in nature. How did Queen Elizabeth II end up as her sons shield against the US legal system? Was Britains head of state prepared to undertake further measures? How and where was the palaces Epstein Affair going to end up?
1
betting the firm
The first warning sign of a hurricane aiming for Buckingham Palace came on 6 July 2019 when billionaire businessman Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal charges related to sex trafficking. Twelve years earlier he had pleaded guilty to Florida State charges of soliciting girls as young as thirteen for prostitution and served nearly thirteen months in low-security Palm Beach County Jail. The sixty six year old now faced as much as forty-three years in a federal jail. Though guards were supposed to check on him every thirty minutes, he was found hanged in his cell on 10 August. Verdict: suicide.
Most of Epsteins influential friends, including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, distanced themselves from him after his first fall from grace. However, for another friendPrince Andrewit was too late.
The US Appeals Court in New York City released two thousand pages of papers from a defamation suit by Virginia Roberts Giuffre that included her claim that Epstein had used her as a sex slave while underage and had forced her to have sex with Andrew on three occasions. Even before these allegations, a photograph had surfaced of the prince with his arm around the seventeen year olds naked midriff.
Also in the picture was Andrews close friend Ghislaine Maxwell, Epsteins girlfriend and daughter of disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell, who died under mysterious circumstances after he went missing from his yacht Lady Ghislaine off the Canary Islands in 1991. In a lawsuit, Giuffre claimed Maxwell had procured her when she was fifteen for Epstein and worked at Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for $9 an hour, and that Maxwell was Epsteins accomplice in trafficking her to Andrew and others. Maxwell denied the allegations outright when she was deposed under oath and called Giuffre a liar, leading Giuffre to sue for defamation. An attempt to get the prince to testify under oath in the defamation case failed. When Giuffres law suit was settled in May 2017, its court papers were sealed, only to be released in part by the New York Court of Appeals the day before Epstein died.
