Copyright Cable News Network
Pressure is intensifying on Britain’s Prince Andrew, who has failed to quell the scandal over his association with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. There has been an avalanche of headlines in recent days, in the run up to the publication of a posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” by his accuser Virginia Giuffre. The royal family will have hoped Andrew’s decision on Friday to give up the use of his royal titles and honors would put an end to the saga. But it has not. Once celebrated as a decorated war hero, Andrew, the brother of King Charles III, has been thrown into the royal wilderness, not even invited to spend Christmas with his family at their Sandringham estate, according to a royal source. Andrew insists he never met Giuffre, who accused the prince of sexually assaulting her while she was a teenager, and has always denied accusations of wrongdoing against him. Critics say the royal family and UK government need to go further to hold the disgraced royal to account. Giuffre died by suicide in April at the age of 41. How close were Prince Andrew and Epstein? Prince Andrew was one of the many high-profile individuals to associate with Epstein. Andrew has said the pair were introduced by Epstein’s then girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell in 1999. He later said they met “infrequently,” adding that their encounters were “probably no more than only once or twice a year.” He also admitted to staying at several properties belonging to the disgraced financier, who was found dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. Andrew is known to have attended a charity fundraiser at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2000, at which Maxwell was also present, according to photographs published in the Palm Beach Post at the time. Months later, Epstein and Maxwell mingled with royalty at a Windsor Castle party hosted by Queen Elizabeth II to mark Andrew’s 40th birthday, as well as Princess Anne’s 50th, the Queen Mother’s 100th and Princess Margaret’s 70th. Andrew later invited the couple back to Windsor in 2006 for his daughter Princess Beatrice’s extravagant 18th birthday ball, according to Britain’s The Sun on Sunday newspaper. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges and registered as a sex offender in a deal that allowed him to avoid federal charges. When did Andrew cut ties with Epstein? The long-running friendship has raised persistent questions about Andrew’s judgment, given his position at the time as a working royal, a status he gave up in 2019. In her book, Giuffre details the three occasions she allegedly had sex with the prince – in London, New York and on Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little St. James. She claimed that Andrew correctly guessed she was underage in the United States when they were introduced and that Epstein gave her $15,000 “for servicing the man the tabloids called ‘Randy Andy.’” She also repeated a claim from a 2015 sworn declaration that the third encounter was “an orgy” on Epstein’s island with the financier and “approximately eight other girls” who “appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English.” Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022 after she filed a civil suit against him in New York. While he didn’t admit wrongdoing, Andrew did acknowledge Giuffre’s suffering as a victim of sex trafficking. The royal has always denied all accusations against him and insisted that he never witnessed or suspected any of the behavior of which Epstein was accused. In a now-infamous BBC interview in 2019, Andrew said that he had severed all ties with Epstein in 2010. However, a newly reported email from 2011 has called that claim into question. Earlier this month, The Mail on Sunday and The Sun on Sunday newspapers reported that Andrew appeared to reach out to Epstein once more, telling him to “keep in close touch” and that they were “in this together.” Andrew has not responded to the reports and CNN has reached out for comment. Meanwhile, London’s Metropolitan Police has said it is “actively looking into” a Mail on Sunday report that Andrew in 2011 asked a police officer assigned to him as a bodyguard to dig up dirt on Giuffre. A royal source told CNN on Monday that the allegation should be “examined in an appropriate way.” What did the royal family know and when? It remains unclear what the royal family, or other members of the royal household, knew about the extent of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, and when they knew it. The 2019 BBC interview was filmed at Buckingham Palace, but the depth of the household’s knowledge of his friendship with Epstein is uncertain. Both his staff and his security detail would have been aware of his movements at the time he associated with Epstein. But the royal family has not commented publicly on any of that. Why has Andrew not been stripped of his titles? Andrew’s behavior put King Charles in a difficult position: effectively banish his brother as a royal outcast or allow the steady drumbeat of negative headlines to risk further reputational damage to the institution. Andrew had already stepped back from his frontline duties in 2019 and was stripped of his military titles and charity patronages by the late Queen in 2022. But the palace clearly felt something more had to be done to halt the seemingly weekly drip-feed of salacious headlines. So, on Friday, Andrew announced that he would stop using his Duke of York title as well as relinquishing other titles and honors bestowed upon him by the royal family over the years. (He was also known as the Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh, a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and as a Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.) Andrew said the decision was made in consultation with King Charles, as well as other members of the family, because the “continued accusations” were distracting from the family’s work. “I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first,” he added. And there’s the rub – keeping it in the family means he did not give up the titles; he merely gave up use of them, and so technically he still holds all of them. Andrew was made a duke, the highest rank in Britain’s system of hereditary peerage, when he married ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 1986. Removing the title requires an act of parliament, which would be a protracted process. But critics, including Giuffre’s brother, say there needs to be greater accountability. While Andrew was known officially as the Duke of York, it’s not a title that many outside the UK would be familiar with and ultimately the status of prince is the only one that matters. Andrew became a prince automatically at birth, as the son of the then reigning monarch, and that status can only be changed if King Charles issues a directive known as a Letters Patent. Andrew also remains eighth in line to the British throne but could be removed by legislation. However, doing this would require the consent of Commonwealth nations around the world, which would take time. The last time this protocol was used was when Edward VIII abdicated in 1936. Why is he still living on royal property? Andrew lives with his ex-wife at Royal Lodge, a 30-room mansion on the Windsor estate, outside London, despite reported attempts by Charles to persuade him to relocate. He secured a 75-year lease on the property in 2003. A royal source said last week that he would continue to live there under a private tenancy agreement with the Crown Estate, which manages the royal family’s land and property holdings. Profits from the estate are paid to the British government. But further outrage was ignited after it was revealed on Tuesday that the terms of the rental agreement effectively mean Andrew has never paid rent on the accommodation. A Downing Street spokesperson said that the lease required an initial one-off payment of £1 million ($1.34 million). Additionally, he was required to pay a further £7.5 million ($10 million) to cover refurbishments which were completed in 2005, according to a National Audit Office report. After those upfront costs, the lease states he has since paid an annual rent of “one peppercorn (if demanded),” a copy of the Royal Lodge leasehold agreement showed. The agreement also includes a clause that the Crown Estate would have to pay Andrew £558,000 ($743,600) if he gave up the property early. “The National Audit Office reviewed the lease arrangements for Royal Lodge in 2005 and in its report, which was published at that time, concluded that the Crown Estate does not have any special procedures when negotiating agreements with the Royal Family,” the Downing Street spokesperson said. “An independent evaluation concluded that the transaction with Prince Andrew and Royal Lodge was appropriate.” Regardless, in the intervening days, there has been mounting pressure on Andrew to leave the property, which sits in Windsor Great Park close to a chapel used by the royals. Lawmaker Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Treasury Committee, said Tuesday: “Where money flows, particularly where taxpayers’ money is involved, or taxpayers’ interests are involved, Parliament has a responsibility to have a light shine upon that, and we need to have answers.” Senior Conservative politician Robert Jenrick told the BBC it was “about time Prince Andrew took himself off to live in private” and that he didn’t think “the taxpayer in any way should be footing the bill for him to live in luxury homes ever again.” Are there other scandals involving Andrew? Prince Andrew has also faced furious questions over his business deals with China and his contact with an alleged Chinese spy. Court documents revealed the disgraced royal’s apparently close relationship with Yang Tengbo. In a tribunal hearing in December 2024 that upheld an earlier decision to bar Yang from the UK, it was revealed that Yang was authorized to act on Prince Andrew’s behalf during business meetings with potential Chinese investors in the UK, and that he was invited to Andrew’s 60th birthday party in 2020. Throughout a government investigation into the relationship, Yang has denied any wrongdoing. Andrew’s office said at the time that the prince ceased his relationship with Yang after receiving government advice. Meanwhile, fresh documents released this year revealed that Andrew sent birthday wishes each year to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. A witness statement from a former aide to the prince revealed that Andrew had a “communication channel” with China through Yang but insisted that there was “nothing to hide.” Could the British government get involved? It’s not just the British monarchy that faces accusations of inaction. Many are pressing the UK government on why it hasn’t moved to address the persistent problem of what to do with Andrew. That came to a head on Tuesday when the Scottish National Party (SNP) tabled a motion calling “on the government to take legislative steps to remove the dukedom granted to Prince Andrew.” A new YouGov poll published on the same day revealed that four in five Britons would support Andrew being formally stripped of his dukedom. In response to the SNP’s move, a Downing Street spokesperson said it was a matter for the Speaker of the House of Commons and reiterated that “we support the judgment of the royal family in this matter to date, and Prince Andrew has already confirmed he won’t be using his titles.” On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he supported “proper scrutiny” of all Crown properties in response to calls for a parliamentary inquiry.
