Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has been linked to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein for years. Prince Andrew openly admits that he was friends with Epstein, and there are photos of two together at parties and Jeffrey’s mansion in Manhattan. Despite Prince Andrew saying that he would help an investigation into Epstein as recently as November, the Duke of York is offering “zero cooperation” to U.S. authorities on the matter.
U.S. law enforcement has reached out to Prince Andrew to get his assistance in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. The FBI has attempted to investigate individuals who may have assisted Epstein in potential sex trafficking crimes involving underage girls.
The FBI and prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York reached out to Prince Andrew and his lawyers about assistance in the case. According to U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who is the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Prince Andrew and his lawyers provided “zero cooperation.”
“It’s fair for people to know whether Prince Andrew has followed through with that public commitment,” Berman said at a news conference on Monday outside of Epstein’s Manhattan townhome.
U.S. authorities have not made any mention that Prince Andrew committed any crimes. However, Epstein’s alleged victims could bring about civil lawsuits against Prince Andrew.
Prosecutors are attempting to find Epstein’s accomplices since Jeffrey died from an alleged suicide on August 10, 2019, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). Epstein was in prison awaiting trial for federal charges of sex trafficking.
One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, alleges that she was forced by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew three times in 2001 when she was underage. One of the occasions was in London at the home of Epstein’s fixer Ghislaine Maxwell. Prince Andrew has denied the accusations. Prince Andrew has also denied ever meeting Giuffre despite there being a photograph of the British prince with his hand around her waist.
New witness claims she saw Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts Giuffre https://t.co/hMUpjOW7KE pic.twitter.com/YG60YHnuQ4
— New York Post (@nypost) December 4, 2019
Lawyer Lisa Bloom, who represents five of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking victims, said it’s time for Andrew “to stop playing games and to come forward to do the right thing and answer questions.”
In November, Prince Andrew gave an interview to BBC News, where he addressed his relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. During that interview, Prince Andrew said that he would help investigators get “closure” on the Epstein case.
“If there was in the right circumstances, yes I would because I think there’s just as much closure for me as there is for everybody else and undoubtedly some very strange and unpleasant activities have been going on,” Andrew said on helping authorities on an Epstein investigation. “I’m afraid to say that I’m not the person who can shed light on it for a number of reasons, one of which is that I wasn’t there long enough.”
“And if you go in for a day, two days at a time, it’s quite easy I’m led to believe for those sorts of people to hide their activities for that period of time and then carry on when they’re not there,” Andrew added.
Prince Andrew said that he first met Epstein in 1999 through his “girlfriend” Ghislaine Maxwell, who he knew since college. In the BBC interview, Andrew said it was a “stretch” to say that he and Epstein were “close friends.” He added that he only saw Epstein “once or twice a year.”
“But it would be a considerable stretch to say that he was a very, very close friend,” Prince Andrew said. “But he had the most extraordinary ability to bring extraordinary people together and that’s the bit that I remember as going to the dinner parties where you would meet academics, politicians, people from the United Nations, I mean it was a cosmopolitan group of what I would describe as US eminents.”
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Prince Andrew admitted that he has stayed at Jeffrey Epstein’s townhome in Manhattan, his mansion in Palm Beach, his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, flew aboard his private jet known as the “Lolita Express,” and at Ghislaine Maxwell’s house in London.
https://twitter.com/GraemeDemianyk/status/1162842305600086016
Since the Epstein interview aired, Prince Andrew has stepped away from his royal public duties.
“It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organizations and charities that I am proud to support,” Andrew said. “Therefore, I have asked Her Majesty if I may step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission.”
The 59-year-old Prince Andrew is the third child of Queen Elizabeth II and eighth in line to the throne.
You can watch the entire BBC News interview with Prince Andrew below.
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