In February 2010, Prince Andrew celebrated his 50th birthday with a glittering reception at St James’s Palace. Jeffrey Epstein, recently released from jail for soliciting sex with a 14-year-old girl, declined an invitation. But hundreds attended, including the model Naomi Campbell and the banker Evelyn de Rothschild, said Alexi Mostrous in The Observer.

Sixteen years on, the man now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor marked his 66th birthday in radically altered circumstances. At around 8am last Thursday, a fleet of unmarked police cars arrived at the former duke’s temporary residence on the Sandringham Estate, and arrested him on suspicion of misconduct in public office. While Andrew was detained in custody, officers searched his homes. Eleven hours later, as he was driven away from Aylsham police station, a photographer snapped him sitting slumped, ashen-faced, in the back of a Range Rover. The next morning, this image was splashed on front pages across the world; two days after that, anti-super-rich activists hung a copy in the Louvre in Paris, above a card reading: “He’s sweating now”.

Ruined man

Even before his arrest, Andrew – who denies any wrongdoing – was a “ruined man”, said Adam Boulton in The i Paper, stripped of his titles, and his Windsor mansion, as the Epstein files confirmed that much of what he’d told Emily Maitlis in his “Newsnight” interview in 2019 had been untrue. The files suggest that he had met Virginia Giuffre – the Epstein survivor who accused him of having sex with her when she was 17 – though he said he had no memory of her; and that, far from cutting ties with Epstein in late 2010, he was in close touch with the paedophile for years afterwards (with their discussions about complex business deals often conducted via an intermediary, Andrew’s adviser David Stern).

Andrew’s arrest was prompted by evidence that, both before and after that date, he’d passed Epstein confidential information he had gleaned as a UK trade envoy. The offence of which he’s suspected carries a possible life term; and the bad news for Andrew is that his brother seems prepared to let them throw the book at him. As the King put it coldly last week, the “law must run its course”.

The King had reportedly objected to Andrew ever being appointed a trade envoy, said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph. When the idea was mooted in around 2000, he argued that his brother was not suited to the job; but the Queen overruled him – with the support of Peter Mandelson, the former trade secretary.

Red flags ignored

I suppose it seemed a good idea at the time, said Hilary Rose in The Times. Having just left the Navy after 22 years, Andrew had no discernible income, and needed something to do. Why not send him abroad, to drum up business for Britain? And yet, nothing in the personality of this most spoiled and entitled of men made him fit for it.

Four years ago, a former maid at his home reported that he would shout at her if she failed to arrange his 72 teddies as he liked them. But even as a toddler, Andrew had a reputation for being “difficult”, prone to kicking dogs and taunting staff. In his teens, he behaved so badly a footman is said to have punched him – and been kept on, because the Queen felt Andrew had deserved it. He had a brief golden period, after his service in the Falklands War, but it didn’t last. On a trip to the US in 1984, he sprayed a press pack with paint – a “prank” that overshadowed the tour. Visiting Lockerbie after the Pan Am disaster of 1988, he shocked grieving residents by telling them that the Americans had had it “much worse”.

During his decade as a trade envoy, ambassadors fed back that he was a liability – rude and visibly bored at engagements, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. According to his biographer, Andrew Lownie, his staff often asked for attractive women to be invited to events. He insisted on travelling with a large entourage of valets and equerries, who were put up in luxury hotels; he even reportedly put massages on the taxpayers’ tab. Yet these red flags were ignored; and nor were other warning signs heeded – though there were clear questions to be asked about how Andrew and his immediate family were funding their famously extravagant lifestyle. Both he and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson regularly claimed to be broke – but it never dented their lavish spending.

Given all we know about the man, it is hard to muster sympathy for Andrew, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. He is “the author of his own misfortunes”, and the police may still dig up more damning evidence against him. And yet, however deserved, his “descent into disgrace must be hard to bear”, and his future must seem very bleak. We “can vilify him all we like”; but his brother, and the authorities, owe Andrew “the moral duty of care” that he seems to have “failed to show to others”.

The arrests of Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have shone a spotlight on the centuries-old common-law offence of misconduct in public office. Neither man has yet been charged, and both deny wrongdoing, but should police investigations proceed to prosecution, this vague and complex offence could be challenging for lawyers to prove.

“Securing a conviction for misconduct in public office is a notoriously difficult task,” said The Telegraph. There are fewer than 50 convictions a year and none of those have involved “high-profile individuals”.

What is it?

The offence of misconduct in public office has been dated back to 1599. It’s a common-law offence, which means it was established by judicial precedent, rather than a specific Act of Parliament. It had fallen into disuse but was revived in recent times to catch corrupt police officers whose misconduct didn’t fall easily into other well-established offences. It carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The offence has four main elements, all of which must be proved:

· The individual is a public officer acting as such.

· The individual wilfully neglects to perform his or her duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself or herself.

· The conduct is to such a degree that it amounts to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.

· The conduct is without reasonable excuse or justification.

The widely acknowledged problem with these elements is their vagueness. What constitutes a public duty is not defined and “the meaning of public trust is fairly elastic”, said The New Statesman. “Few would say it’s a satisfactory area of law.”

The Law Commission “has proposed that the offence be abolished”, and the government has included “some replacement offences” in the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, also known as the Hillsborough Law. But that bill is currently “stalled” in Parliament and “is not yet law (and may never be)”.

Who has been convicted for it?

The offence is clearly intended for charging those in trusted public office who have betrayed that trust. It was described by legal scholar Sir William Blackstone, way back in 1765, as “a crime of deep malignity”. In its modern incarnation, it has mainly been used to punish misconduct by junior and mid-ranking public officials, with police and prison officers accounting for 92% of convictions between 2014 and 2024, according to the Institute For Government.

In 2009, former MP Damian Green was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office but he was not charged. In 2016, former MEP Nikki Sinclaire was charged and tried but acquitted. Last year, independent MP Dan Norris was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, as well as sexual assault and rape, and investigations are still ongoing.

In 2019, former prime minister Boris Johnson was summoned to face a private prosecution for misconduct in a public office – over allegations that he has misled the British public about the cost of European Union membership in the run-up to Brexit. The High Court dismissed the case and the summons was overturned.

What could happen now?

As the law around the offence that both Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor are being investigated for is “famously vague”, it “complicates the task”, said Robert Hazell, a professor of politics and government at University College London, on The Conversation. If any charges are brought, lawyers “will have to devote more time and effort to understanding the elements of the offence, and then ensuring that they can prove each element.”

There are allegations that both men shared confidential government information with Jeffrey Epstein. Under this law, “if sensitive government material was shared without proper authority, the question would be whether that amounted to a deliberate breach of official duty”, said Simarjot Singh Judge, a managing partner at Judge Law. “Prosecutors would need to establish intent, seriousness, and whether the conduct crossed the threshold into criminal wrongdoing.”

Given the seriousness of this offence, convictions “typically result in an immediate custodial sentence”, said law firm K&L Gates in a briefing paper. Although the maximum sentence is life imprisonment, “sentences imposed to date have generally been lower”.

What happened

Britain’s Thames Valley Police Thursday arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III, on suspicion of misconduct in public office tied to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The former prince was “released under investigation,” meaning he has not yet been charged nor exonerated, after almost 12 hours of questioning.

Who said what

Mountbatten-Windsor was detained early Thursday, his 66th birthday, after unmarked police cars arrived at his new home on the king’s Sandringham Estate. The Thames Valley Police is “accustomed to playing a different role for Britain’s royal family — as protectors,” said The New York Times, but confirmed earlier this month that it was investigating whether Mountbatten-Windsor improperly shared confidential government documents with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy from 2001 to 2011.

The “arrest of the senior royal, eighth in line to the throne, is unprecedented in modern times,” Reuters said. It was a “catch your breath moment” made “even more dramatic by the unprecedented statement” from Charles, “offering no hiding place or protection” for his brother, said BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan. “Let me state clearly,” the king said: “The law must take its course.”

The last senior member of Britain’s royal family to be arrested in connection with a serious crime was King Charles I, who was beheaded for treason in 1649 following his defeat in the English Civil War. Misconduct in public office, the potential charge for Mountbatten-Windsor, carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

What next?

“This is the most spectacular fall from grace for a member of the royal family in modern times,” Craig Prescott, a legal expert at the University of London, told The Associated Press. “And it may not be over yet.” Police said earlier this month they were also looking into another report from the Epstein files, that a woman was taken to an address in Windsor in 2010 “for sexual purposes.” Even if no other revelations emerge, The Wall Street Journal said, a “lengthy police investigation — and a possible criminal trial — could see the shadow of the Epstein scandal hanging over the British royal family for months to come.”

To enter the “Epstein Library”, as it is grandly called, you just have to go to the website of the US Department of Justice, and click Yes on a pop-up that asks if you are 18 or over. That is all it takes to become immersed in a deeply disturbing world, said Helen Rumbelow in The Times.

‘Grand facade’

The more than three million documents and photographs related to the late paedophile are in a “careless jumble”; and the FBI warns that they may contain forgeries and false allegations. But after days poring through the Epstein files, I started to see these papers as a “Rosetta Stone through which women might understand male power”. They take us behind the “grand facade” presented by men who run the world, in government, academia, law and business; and they reveal how these figures speak to one another when “pussy” – in their parlance – is “out of the room where it happens”.

In this world, the men hold the cards, said Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian. The women are powerless or peripheral. While Epstein and his male associates joke, network, trade information, swap favours and engage in “light displays of one-upmanship”, women appear mainly only as staff, or providers of sex. Trawling the files, you find yourself eavesdropping on the many female assistants who organise the diaries of these busy men and ensure their lives run seamlessly as they move from Paris to New York, Dubai to Davos.

More often, you hear the men. The word “pussy” comes up hundreds of times. In 2016, a contact promises Epstein “abundant young pussy flesh”; another routinely signs off business emails wishing him “lots of P”. The men speak unguardedly. In 2012, the ex-chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjørn Jagland, tells Epstein about the “extraordinary girls” in Albania. An Emirati businessman complains that when the “Moldavian arrived”, she was a “big disappointment” – “not as attractive as the picture”. In 2019, the left-wing scholar Noam Chomsky laments the “horrible” press Epstein is getting, and bemoans the “hysteria” surrounding the abuse of women.

Meanwhile, in the background of all this, Epstein is constantly managing the women he has imported into his life. “Take a selfie of your pussy and send,” he tells one. It’s your “whore moans”, he suggests to another.

Clever conman

All the people who appear in the files insist they knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes, yet his homes were full of young women – “young girls with no last names”, as the Hollywood publicist Peggy Siegal refers to them in an email. These girls were groomed and abused on an industrial scale, said Janice Turner in The Times: hundreds passed through his doors. Some were from poor families, offered $300 to give Epstein a massage that turned sexual; others were students or artists, lured to his homes by promises of grants or patronage. Still more were young models, flown in from eastern Europe. The pimp-in-chief was Ghislaine Maxwell, but the files suggest there were others, from the model agency boss Jean-Luc Brunel, who killed himself in jail, to the late socialite Annabelle Neilson.

Epstein’s friends seem to have accepted his taste for girls as though it were a hobby, like collecting fine wine. Take Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn, who messages Epstein about a pal with a jewellery business. “I know you have a lot of... young girls, women friends,” she says. “All women, and girls in your case, like jewellery.”

One of Epstein’s strategies was to pay his victims to recruit their friends, said Memphis Barker in The Daily Telegraph. And he pulled a similar trick in his parallel, sometimes overlapping, world of wealth and power – always leveraging his contacts, and the information they gave him, “to gain another, bigger prize”. There are all sorts of theories about how this working-class college dropout joined the elites, but the reality is simply that he was a clever conman.

In the 1970s, he blagged a lucrative Wall Street job, which he used to make contacts and engage in dodgy deals. Once a millionaire, he used his expertise in tax-avoidance and takeovers to gain access to the super-rich, whose fortunes he raided while acting as their adviser. He reportedly made some $200 million by advising the retail billionaire Les Wexner, and stole up to $100 million. With this sort of money, he could use donations to good causes, lavish hospitality and so on, to cultivate powerful people from all over the world, from senior Kremlin officials to Virgin boss Richard Branson to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli PM.

Although there are hints in the files that some of his contacts were drawn into his crimes – leaving them too exposed to turn on him – there is no clear evidence of a criminal conspiracy, said J. Oliver Conroy in The Guardian. What the files do seem to confirm, though, is the conspiracy theorist’s view of an elite stratosphere, where normal rules don’t apply, everyone knows each other, and ideological differences are subsumed to self-interested motives.

The UK has sunk to its lowest ever score in the global corruption index, which ranks 182 countries by perceived levels of corruption in the public sector.

Having dropped more than 10 places over the past decade, this is more than “a temporary blip” for the UK, said Daniel Bruce, chief executive of Transparency International UK. “It risks becoming a defining feature of our political culture.”

How has the UK’s ranking changed?

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published by Transparency International, is an annual list compiled by experts and business people. Nations are ranked on a scale of 0 (completely corrupt) to 100 (completely uncorrupt). In last year’s index, the UK scored 71; this year, it has shed another point, with a score of 70.

The drop did not affect the UK’s overall ranking of 20th out of 182, making it one of the least corrupt countries in the index. However, there has been a significant long-term decline from 2016, when the UK scored 81 and was ranked the joint-tenth most transparent nation globally.

What are the major concerns?

In the UK, “the past decade has seen major domestic scandals, the awarding of favours and honours to political donors, and MPs working as lobbyists for paying clients and corrupt regimes”, said Transparency International.

That has ramped up over the past year, said Bruce, including “some of the highest spending political campaigning on record, alongside troubling reports of access-for-cash arrangements and questionable appointment processes”.

It comes as the government finds itself “mired in scandal” over the Peter Mandelson-Jeffrey Epstein relationship, which has done “huge damage to public trust and increases concerns around corruption”, the charity said.

Despite recent talk by Keir Starmer about restoring integrity in politics, the latest score “shows that business as usual is not enough to turn the corner, with corruption concerns risking becoming embedded as the ‘new normal’”.

How did other countries do?

For the eighth year in a row Denmark topped the list, with 89 points out of 100 for transparency, closely followed by Finland (88) and Singapore (84). Venezuela (10), Somalia (9) and South Sudan (9) were at the bottom of the index. The US scored 64, its lowest ever ranking.

Globally, the CPI average score has dropped to 42, its lowest level in more than a decade, with the majority of countries analysed – 122 – scoring below 50. Only five countries scored more than 80 – “once a benchmark for clean governance” – down from 12 a decade ago, said DW. Around 50 countries have “recorded significant drops in the rankings since 2012, notably Turkey, Hungary and Nicaragua, due to democratic backsliding, weak institutions and rule of law” and “cronyism”.

With the global order “under strain”, many leaders have cited “security, economic or geopolitical issues as reasons to centralise power, sideline checks and balances and roll back commitments to internationally agreed standards – including anti-corruption measures”, said Transparency International.

What happened

Repercussions from the Justice Department’s recent dump of millions of Jeffrey Epstein files continue to mount outside the U.S., and on Wednesday they also prompted the ouster of Brad Karp as chair of Paul Weiss, one of America’s top corporate law firms. In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced challenges to his leadership from both his Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the U.S. last year. London’s Metropolitan Police earlier this week opened a criminal inquiry into files suggesting Mandelson accepted money from Epstein and passed him confidential financial information while serving as a government minister 15 years ago.

Who said what

Karp said he was stepping down as chair, though not leaving Paul Weiss, after “recent reporting” had “placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm.” In one newly released email, Karp asked Epstein to help get his son a job on a Woody Allen film. After a July 2015 dinner at Epstein’s New York mansion, Karp thanked his “extraordinary host” for “an evening I’ll never forget,” adding, “You’re amazing.” In 2019, Epstein asked Steve Bannon to help him secure Karp a membership at the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club.

Even before these “series of embarrassing emails” came out, Karp “faced intense scrutiny” for making Paul Weiss the first law firm to reach a deal with President Donald Trump to avoid sanctions, said The New York Times. The deal was “widely seen” as “capitulation” to extortive demands, and “criticism of his decision only grew” after the “handful of law firms” that challenged Trump’s executive order “easily prevailed in court.”

What next?

Trump, who appears more than 6,000 times in the Epstein files, absolved himself on Tuesday and told reporters it was “time now for the country to maybe get on to something else.”

High drama continues in Westminster, as Keir Starmer ordered the release of files relating to his government’s appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

Mandelson was sacked from his US posting last September after emails emerged showing him continuing his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein as the American faced charges of soliciting a minor. This week, newly released Epstein files revealed that, when Mandelson was business secretary in 2008, he leaked Downing Street emails containing market-sensitive information to Epstein. The Metropolitan Police has formally launched a criminal investigation.

These latest revelations have left many Labour figures “seething with disappointment and boiling with betrayal”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. The “gravity of what is alleged” could build “to perhaps one of the biggest” political scandals “for a generation”, and calls into question Starmer’s judgement in sending Mandelson to Washington a year ago.

What is in the files?

Starmer has said he will release emails, documents and messages relating to Mandelson’s appointment – as long as they do not prejudice national security or damage diplomatic relations. The decision pre-empts the Conservatives’ plan to use a House of Commons debate today to try to force the publication of the records, including details of what Mandelson told the prime minister and his powerful chief of staff Morgan McSweeney about the nature of his relationship with Epstein.

“Attention will turn swiftly” now to that proviso for exempting documents and “which ones aren’t in scope”, said Politico. There will no doubt be “debate about whether WhatsApp messages sent on private phones will be included”. And it’s not yet clear “who is in charge of the process” and “which senior officials” have oversight.

The government has signalled its “intention is to be transparent”, while avoiding a situation where every single piece of communication is published, said The Guardian. The documents identified for release will also need to be assessed to check if they first need to be seen by the police. This process will take time and, as has been seen with the release of the Epstein files in the US, will inevitably lead to further political wrangling and accusations of a cover-up. Expect this story to run and run.

What does it mean for Starmer?

With most political scandals, “there is an agreed full stop, a time for the circus to move on” but, for Downing Street, Mandelson “risks being a headache that simply will not end”, said The Guardian’s senior political correspondent Peter Walker. How on earth did “the team around Starmer” think it was such “a good idea to appoint a tarnished, if well connected, figure to be the ambassador to Donald Trump’s court”?

Some Labour MPs are focusing their anger on McSweeney, “a former protégé of Mandelson”, who is believed to have pushed for his appointment as ambassador. But, as we have seen in previous administrations, “changing the team around the leader will buy you only a small amount of time if” most of your backbenchers, “and the electorate more widely”, think that “the problem is not the team but the person they advise”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, seen by many as a potential challenger for Starmer’s leadership position, today defended the prime minister’s decision to appoint Mandelson, and rejected the idea that it could cost the PM his job. That would “let Mandelson off the hook”, Streeting told LBC. “This is his misjudgment, his misconduct, his irresponsibility.”

One factor that could play in Starmer’s favour, said Politico, is that he has never got involved with the Labour dinner circuit, like Streeting or McSweeney, and he has never been as close to Mandelson as McSweeney. “You could suggest that the PM has less to lose than others in government if cosy Labour texts to Mandelson end up in the public domain.”

What happened

Millions of files on Jeffrey Epstein released over the weekend show he maintained cordial relationships with numerous wealthy and powerful people — including Elon Musk and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — between his 2008-09 jail term for soliciting sex with a minor and his final arrest and suicide in 2019. Several of them previously denied ever spending time with Epstein.

Outside the U.S., “the fallout from the release of the files has been swift,” The Associated Press said. Slovakia’s national security adviser Miroslav Lajcak resigned over his Epstein links, former British cabinet secretary Peter Mandelson quit the ruling Labour Party to spare it “further embarrassment,” and Prime Minister Kier Starmer urged former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to testify before the U.S. House Oversight Committee.

Who said what

Musk and Epstein corresponded in 2012 and 2013, trying to meet up in Florida or the Caribbean. After Epstein asked about flying Musk and his partner out to his infamous private island, Musk replied, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Last September, Musk said on social media that “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED.” Lutnick did apparently visit Epstein’s island with his wife and children in 2012, and had drinks with him in New York in 2011, despite saying last year that he cut off contact with “gross” Epstein in 2005.

Director Brett Ratner, who made the newly released Melania Trump documentary “Melania,” appears in several undated photos with Epstein and redacted women at Epstein’s New York townhouse. Ratner told The Wall Street Journal in 2023 that he had never met Epstein. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson told Epstein in a 2013 email he “would love to see” him again ”as long as you bring your harem!”

The “who’s who of powerful men” who make appearances in the Epstein trove “all have denied having anything to do with his sexual abuse of girls and young women,” the AP said. There are “a lot of emails” and “a lot of horrible photographs,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”

What next?

The tranche of new files identified at least 43 of Epstein’s victims by name, in violation of the law compelling their release, according to the Journal. It also contained “dozens of unredacted nude images” of “young women or possibly teenagers,” The New York Times said. The Justice Department said it was working to fix or redact the flagged files.

Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are coming under renewed pressure to testify before US Congress over their links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson resigned his membership of the Labour party last night to avoid causing any “further embarrassment”. On Friday, newly released documents revealed a picture of the Labour grandee in his underwear, payments from Epstein to Mandelson, and email exchanges between the pair that appear to show Mandelson leaking confidential Downing Street documents to Epstein. The new batch of Epstein files also implicated Andrew, including a series of photos of the former prince kneeling on all fours over an unidentified woman lying on the floor.

Both men’s association with Epstein has wrecked their public reputation but, as the furore over the last few days has shown, they will find it hard to remain out of the spotlight.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer has called on Andrew to cooperate with US authorities who are investigating Epstein. It is “rare for a prime minister to intervene on matters relating to the royal family”, said The Times’ editorial board, but “such is the anger and outcry” that – in an unusually “deft reading of the public mood” – Starmer hopes to pressure Andrew “into finally doing what he should have done" a long time ago. Unless he “fully explains his past actions and what he knew about Epstein’s lifestyle”, this will remain “a running sore for the royal family”.

A lawyer representing some of Epstein’s victims told ITV News that Andrew should be extradited and forced to testify. But US investigators “face a succession of legal obstacles which make” that “unlikely”, said Cahal Milmo in The i Paper.

US investigators may not have more luck with Mandelson. Congress is “poised to issue the peer with a demand to testify in Washington”, said Connor Stringer in The Telegraph, but it “cannot compel testimony from foreigners”, so “he is under no legal obligation to respond”. Of course, “he could be subpoenaed if he sets foot on US soil” and “if he were to ignore that request, he would be liable to arrest”.

What next?

“There will be a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who want to exert as much pressure on this as possible,” The Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale told Sky News. Some would like the US to invoke the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Britain, under which each country can request cooperation to secure testimony, via court order if necessary, from witnesses abroad. But, given the Trump administration’s proximity to the scandal, few expect this to happen.

In Andrew’s case, what might eventually force his hand is not threats of legal action but rather “internal pressure from within the royal household”, royal historian and constitutional expert Ed Owens told The i Paper. “Prime ministers do not generally speak on these sorts of things without checking with the Palace first” so “I’m wondering whether, behind the scenes, there has been a changing of the wind”.

What happened

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday they have no intention to testify in the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. In a letter to committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), the Clintons said they had already given the panel what “little information we have” on Epstein’s “horrific” crimes, and subpoenas for them to appear for closed-door depositions were “legally invalid” and clearly driven by “partisan politics.” Comer said he would move to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress.

Who said what

Comer’s “relentless efforts” to force the Clintons to testify “reflect his overall approach to his panel’s Epstein inquiry,” The New York Times said. He has sought to “deflect focus” from President Donald Trump’s own “ties to the convicted sex offender” and his administration’s mishandling of the Epstein case, and to “shift the spotlight onto prominent Democrats.” Bill Clinton, like Trump, “had a well-documented friendship” with Epstein “throughout the 1990s and early 2000s,” The Associated Press, but neither president has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.

The Clintons’ lawyers sent Comer a letter Monday night laying out their case for why the subpoenas are “invalid and legally unenforceable,” citing the same decades of legal precedent Trump used in 2022 to thwart a Democratic subpoena to testify about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Comer said his committee would not try to compel testimony from Trump.

What next?

If Comer’s committee declares the Clintons in contempt next week, “the full House would next vote on whether to refer the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution,” The Washington Post said. The “seldom-used congressional power” can result in anything from a “symbolic” rebuke to a year in jail, Politico said, but “there’s reason to believe” the Clintons may face “dramatic consequences,” given the Trump DOJ’s willingness to target his “perceived enemies.”

There is a political storm brewing in the US over the disclosure of the Epstein files and their link to President Donald Trump.

At least 13 files, including a photo containing Trump, were removed by the Department of Justice from the latest release of documents, only to be republished after a review following concerns over victim identification.

The evidence was reinstated without any “alteration or redaction”, said the DoJ, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche explicitly stating on NBC News that “it has nothing to do with President Trump”.

What did the commentators say?

“The documents produced no major revelations,” said The New York Times. The photos in particular underlined how Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, “attracted a remarkably broad spectrum of famous people into his orbit”, with Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Walter Cronkite appearing in the latest batch.

The redactions have caused the most controversy, said The Guardian. Blanche argued that the government “did not have time to review all the files to make redactions needed to protect victims”, with at least one victim claiming that she had been identified in the DoJ dump.

Conversely, in some areas, the redactions were “too aggressive”. For instance, a picture of Clinton, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross was also mistakenly redacted to obscure a child’s face. The child was Jackson’s son, with images “readily available” from commercial photo archives.

There is only one “unequivocal takeaway” from this latest episode, said CNN. The Trump administration’s efforts to “quell the storm have whipped up a new vortex of political energy” that could potentially harm the president.

The most recent release has exposed the “stunning revelation that there are 1,200 people identified as victims or their relatives”, with “materials from dozens of hard drives, old CDs and computers”. Though there is nothing to suggest any direct wrongdoing on Trump’s part, it fuels the “ever-deepening political storm” surrounding him.

There are “several possibilities” explaining the administration’s actions. The “sheer size” of the data could be posing “genuine issues” for officials. The department “may lack the competence” to do such a vast job “comprehensively and quickly”, following “purges of career officials by Trump’s aides”. Lastly, critics of the president “would not be surprised” if the DoJ was trying to brazenly “protect” Trump. Whatever the reason, this will cause a significant “headache” for him.

If Trump has tried to “deflect attention” away from himself, he “may have succeeded”, as the latest tranche of documents “shifted the spotlight” on to former Democrat president Bill Clinton, said the Financial Times. After eventually signing the legislation to release the files, Trump has recognised the “political benefit” of using the files to “tarnish the reputation of a prominent Democrat” and “one of his great ideological foes”.

This speaks to how the files have become a “weapon in America’s escalating ideological war”. On the left, politicians are employing the new information to “discredit” Trump, while the president and his administration are using them to “attack his adversaries”. The conflict continues, as the battles over the files “underscore the claims of Democrats and others that Trump is using the DoJ to pursue his political opponents”: a charge that Trump has “repeatedly levelled at the Biden administration”.

What next?

Representatives Ro Khanna (Democrat) and Thomas Massie (Republican) are seeking to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress, for not releasing more documents related to Epstein. Both were involved in the original drafting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and Khanna now wants to see the “60-count federal indictment of Epstein from 2007 and the accompanying prosecution memo”, said The Washington Post.

In a statement, the justice department said that materials “will continue being reviewed and redacted” in line with legal requirements, exercising an “abundance of caution as we receive additional information”.

Much has been made of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged ties to Donald Trump, but the president is only one of numerous people with connections to the disgraced financier. The latest revelations, courtesy of a massive batch of Epstein’s emails released by the House Oversight Committee, show that many famous public figures had significant ties to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019.

While these communications do not necessarily prove guilt, they have raised more questions as the Epstein scandal continues to brew. Notably, all of these email exchanges “took place years after Epstein became a registered sex offender in 2008,” said USA Today.

Lawrence ‘Larry’ Summers

Summers, a former Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration who was also once president of Harvard University, was shown to have corresponded with Epstein over at least seven years. While it was previously reported that the men knew each other, the emails “indicate the two met for dinner frequently, with Epstein often trying to connect Summers to prominent global figures,” said BBC News.

Summers, a Democrat, largely used the email communications to criticize Trump’s agenda but also talked to Epstein about nonpolitical issues. On one occasion, he “appeared to seek advice from Epstein about a romantic relationship he was interested in initiating with a female economist,” said USA Today. After the emails were made public, Summers announced he was stepping back from most of his public positions, including resigning from the board of OpenAI and his professorship at Harvard. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said to The Harvard Crimson.

Steve Bannon

Presidential adviser-turned-MAGA-influencer Steve Bannon was found to have been “workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life,” said The Guardian. Bannon, who served in Trump’s administration during his first term, was “devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history” in an effort to help Epstein craft a defense. Both of the men were also “strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s right-wing populist agenda and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.”

There was also evidence that Bannon used Epstein to strengthen his ties with global figures. In one notable exchange from 2018, Epstein emailed Bannon to let him know “‘there are many leaders of countries we can organize for you to have one-on-ones’ with if Bannon agreed to spend eight to 10 days in Europe,” said Politico. In at least one email, Bannon, who has declined to comment on the relationship, also refers to Epstein as an “amazing assistant.”

Noam Chomsky

Like Summers, famed linguistics professor Noam Chomsky was known to have had a relationship with Epstein. When asked about the pair’s relationship in 2023, Chomsky told The Wall Street Journal his “first response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him, and we met occasionally.” However, the new emails reveal that the pair’s relationship may have been more involved than previously thought. This is part of a new light that is being cast on Epstein’s “deep involvement with prominent scientists and scholars,” said Scientific American.

This includes allegations that the association between Chomsky and Epstein “went deeper than the occasional political and academic discussions the former had previously claimed to have with the latter,” said The Guardian. This includes being close enough to discuss potential vacation plans. Chomsky also “reportedly acknowledged receiving about $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein while sorting the disbursement of common funds,” though the 96-year-old has maintained that none of the money came directly from Epstein himself.

Kathryn Ruemmler

Another politically adjacent name who moved to the private sector, Kathryn Ruemmler was White House general counsel during the Obama administration before taking a job as the top lawyer for investment bank Goldman Sachs. When Ruemmler “needed to vent about Donald Trump’s rise in politics, she turned to their mutual acquaintance Jeffrey Epstein,” said Business Insider.

As with other Epstein associates, the new emails “suggest a deeper relationship between Ruemmler and Epstein than was previously known,” said Business Insider. Ruemmler “confided in Epstein when a rival law firm tried to poach her, when looking for a New York City apartment and when she was being vetted for consideration as attorney general.” Goldman Sachs has stood by Ruemmler as this information has come out. These emails “were private correspondence well before Kathy Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs,” a spokesperson for the bank told CNBC. Ruemmler herself told The Wall Street Journal in 2023, “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.”

Peter Thiel

While Peter Thiel is best known as the cofounder of PayPal and technology company Palantir, the billionaire has found himself ingrained in conservative politics through his association with figures like Vice President JD Vance. But the new emails show that Thiel may have had a close relationship with Epstein as well. In at least one instance, Epstein appeared to invite Thiel to his private Caribbean island, writing, “Dec visit me Caribbean.”

This island “near St. Thomas in the Caribbean has long been the subject of speculation about which possible conspirators may have visited the island, which Epstein allegedly used to conceal his criminal behavior,” said Politico. Epstein also previously “put $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures, a New York firm that was cofounded by Mr. Thiel,” said The New York Times. Thiel has said he never visited Epstein’s island and has denied any wrongdoing.

Peggy Siegal

Peggy Siegal is one of the most recognizable entertainment publicists and has spent decades crafting a media empire. But she has also generated a fair share of controversy due to her “longtime association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,” said The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. Siegal reportedly “helped facilitate Epstein’s return to elite social circles after his conviction through private gatherings she organized at his Upper East Side home.”

But the recent tranche of emails reveals that Siegal and Epstein may have had a closer relationship than many previously believed. In at least one newly revealed email, Epstein wrote to Siegal “with an ask: Could she reach out to media mogul Arianna Huffington to enlist her help in clearing his name?” said Politico. Epstein also asked Siegal if Huffington, the cofounder of HuffPost, could send reporters to investigate one of his most notable accusers, Virginia Giuffre. Siegal “offered to send the message to Huffington on her own behalf if Epstein fixed the grammar,” but both Siegal and Huffington have said nothing ever came of the request.

Of all the scandals that have plagued Donald Trump throughout his lifetime in the public eye, his extensive and well-documented relationship with disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein presents the most clear and immediate danger to the president. While Trump has long denied any wrongdoing, the public contours of his association with Epstein paint a compelling — if frustratingly incomplete — picture of two men with years of shared history. Despite the president’s repeated claims that he and Epstein were mere social acquaintances who suffered a falling out of sorts over a young woman in Trump’s former employ, the steady drip of Epstein-related material from Congress, coupled with Trump’s conspicuously ardent reactions thereof, suggest a much more robust bond.

As the president fends off a growing bipartisan push for full governmental transparency on a scandal that shows little sign of abating, here is what we know about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s long, complicated friendship.

1980s

While it’s unclear exactly when and where Trump and Epstein first met , Trump in a 2002 New York magazine interview said he’d known “terrific guy” Epstein “for fifteen years,” placing their initial point of contact in the mid-to-late 1980s. This was “around the time” of Trump’s 1985 purchase of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein “was also living,” said Forbes. “In my mind,” Epstein was Trump’s “best friend, you know,” former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casinos COO Jack O’Donnell said to CNN in 2025.

1992

Trump and Epstein are filmed together during a party for a segment of Faith Daniels’ talk show, “A Closer Look,” about Trump’s life post-divorce from first wife Ivana. This “most widely circulated footage” of the pair shows the two men “evidently assessing” the women at the event, which included NFL cheerleaders in town for a game, Rolling Stone said. At one point, Trump is “seen gesturing to a woman” and tells Epstein, “Look at her, back there .… She’s hot,” NBC News said. Trump later “said something else into Epstein’s ear,” prompting the financier to “double over with laughter.”

That same year, Florida-based businessman George Houraney flew 28 women to Trump’s estate for a “Calendar Girl” competition. Aside from the women, The New York Times said, the “only guests were Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.” Describing the incident to the Times, Houraney claims he said, “Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”

1993-2000

Trump and Epstein’s relationship continued through the ’90s, with the pair appearing in a photograph with Trump’s children Eric and Ivanka at a Harley Davidson Cafe opening in 1993. That same year, Epstein was photographed attending Trump’s second wedding to model Marla Maples. “I wish now I took more of him with Trump,” photographer Dafydd Jones said to CNN.“I had the job of photographing the Trump wedding, so I stood with the press and photographed him.”

In the subsequent four years, Trump would fly seven times on Epstein’s infamous aircraft, according to flight logs released during the trial of accomplice sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

1997 also saw Trump photographed alongside Epstein at a Victoria's Secret party in New York City. In 2000, Trump, Epstein, Maxwell and soon-to-be Trump spouse Melania Knauss posed for a series of pictures together at a party at Mar-a-Lago also attended by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince of England, who was stripped of his royal titles this year for sexual abuse and his relationship with Epstein.

2000-2006

At the dawn of the new millennium, Trump and Epstein’s apparent friendship appeared to be going strong. In 2000, though, the seeds of discontent between the two patricians were planted when Virginia Giuffre, then a teenager working as a Mar-a-Lago spa attendant, was hired away from Trump by Maxwell and Epstein as a masseuse. Giuffre, one of Epstein and Maxwell’s “most well-known sex trafficking accusers,” took her own life in early 2025, The Associated Press said. While her allegations were not part of Epstein’s criminal prosecutions, she has become “central to conspiracy theories about the case.”

By 2002, however, Trump was still singing Epstein’s public praises, describing him as a person who was a “lot of fun to be with” and who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” to New York magazine.

The next year, the pair connected again for Epstein’s 50th birthday, for which Trump penned a poem written out and formatted to look like the body of a naked woman. Trump, who initially denied The Wall Street Journal’s report on the card’s existence, signed the message “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

In 2004, whatever friendship existed between Trump and Epstein seems to have suffered a fatal blow when both men competed to purchase the enormous Maison de l’Amitie, an exclusive Palm Beach property that ultimately sold to Trump for more than $41 million. Two weeks after Trump obtained the property, Palm Beach police “fielded a tip that young women were seen coming and going from Epstein’s home,” said The Washington Post. Several months later, the local police received another complaint about Epstein, and by 2006 a grand jury had indicted him for solicitation.

2007

Trump finally “severed ties” entirely with Epstein in 2007, allegedly after the then-indicted financier “hit on the teenage daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member,” thereby damaging the “Trump brand of glitz and glamour,” The Miami Herald said. In 2025, Trump insisted that he’d made Epstein a persona non grata for “taking our people” from Mar-a-Lago, and has “long maintained” that his relationship with Epstein ended before the latter’s 2006 indictment, NPR said. But journalists who viewed Mar-a-Lago’s membership log said Epstein’s account at the club wasn’t closed until October 2007, “more than a year after he was indicted and released on bail,” said The Daily Beast.

2010

During a filmed deposition, Epstein is questioned about his relationship with Trump, and asked whether the pair had “socialized in the presence of females under the age of 18?” Epstein demurred from answering the question, citing his constitutional rights.

2015-2019

Now-shuttered media publication Gawker obtained and published Epstein’s infamous “black book” of contacts, as well as the passenger logs for Epstein’s private aircraft, in 2015. Mentioned alongside international notables like Mick Jagger and Prince Andrew, Trump’s name, among others, appeared circled in the book by Epstein’s (since-deceased) housekeeper, “supposedly to identify them as potential ‘material witnesses,’” Vanity Fair said.

The following year, an unidentified plaintiff using the name “Katie Johnson” sued both Trump and Epstein multiple times, alleging the pair raped her in 1994 when she was a 13-year-old aspiring model. The suits were all eventually withdrawn or dismissed, and to date, it is “still not clear who Katie Johnson was, or if she ever existed,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested and held on federal sex trafficking charges. In response to questions about their relationship, Trump said he “was not a fan of his” in an effort to “further distance himself from his former friend,” said Rolling Stone. One month later, Epstein would be dead from an apparent jail cell suicide that has provided fresh fuel for Epstein-associated conspiracy theories in the years since.

2019-2024

Trump was reportedly “shocked” at Epstein’s jailhouse death, and “believed conspiracy theories would inevitably follow,” said The Daily Beast. Trump had the “same reaction I did,” former Attorney General Bill Barr said to congressional investigators during a deposition in the summer of 2025. “How the hell did that happen, he’s in Federal custody?”

The following year, Trump surprised observers with an “unusual detour” to offer “warm words” for Maxwell, who had been arrested that past July, the Times said. Asked whether he thought Maxwell might publicly name names connected with Epstein, Trump said, “I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.” The remarks “renewed attention” on the Trump-Epstein relationship, the Times said, particularly after the president had “sought to distance himself from the disgraced financier.”

In 2024, just days before Trump was to win reelection, model Stacey Williams alleged that Trump had inappropriately groped and fondled her during a visit to Trump tower with Epstein, whom she was casually dating at the time. “I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated,” Williams said in an interview with The Guardian. “I felt like a piece of meat.”

Now

Since returning to the White House for the second time, Trump has gone out of his way to portray himself as maximally transparent regarding Epstein, even as his efforts highlight the degree to which his administration seems unwilling to act accordingly. Schisms within the Justice Department over the White House's handling of the case quickly threatened to overshadow the administration’s attempts to rerelease tranches of largely-public Epstein-related material to select right-wing influencers. At the same time, the White House’s conspicuous efforts to court a now-imprisoned Maxwell, and her congruent efforts to secure favorable treatment, have only accentuated Trump’s associations with her and Epstein.

In early November of 2025, after weeks of congressional wrangling and dueling public statements, lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee released huge swaths of Epstein-related items, including evidence that the disgraced sex trafficker remained in close contact with many in Trump’s orbit long after he and the president had fallen out. In the aftermath of those revelations, both the House and Senate passed a bill to release the extent of the government’s Epstein documents, with key exceptions for protecting witnesses, issues of national security and other sensitive matters. In a post on Truth Social, Trump confirmed he’d signed the bill into law, but stressed that “Democrats have used the ‘Epstein’ issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories.”

What happened

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on Wednesday took leave from his teaching and directorial duties at Harvard University and also stepped down from the board of OpenAI, amid new allegations about his cozy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The university on Tuesday told The Harvard Crimson it was reopening an investigation into “individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents,” a group that included Summers.

Who said what

Summers, who served as Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006, is “among the highest-level U.S. personalities to pay a price for his relationship to Epstein,” Reuters said. Emails released by the House last week showed the two men communicating up until 2019 — long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction on soliciting sex from a minor and shortly before he was arrested and died of suicide in prison. In 2018, Summers, who is married, sought his advice on pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman who viewed him as a mentor, leading Epstein to call himself Summers’ “wingman.”

Summers announced Monday that he was “stepping back” from his public commitments, and on Tuesday he told his economics class that despite his “regret” and “shame” over the Epstein emails, “I think it’s very important that I fulfill my teaching obligations” for “a time,” according to online footage posted by students. Along with reversing course on teaching, Summers has “shed a number of other positions this week,” The New York Times said, including affiliations with Santander bank and several prominent think tanks, and as a contributor to Bloomberg and the Times.

What next?

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a law that compels the Justice Department to release its cache of Epstein investigation files within 30 days. It’s “unlikely” we will see “potent new evidence of criminal misconduct” in those files, said Politico’s Ankush Khardori, “but I expect a whole lot of embarrassing stuff to come out. And we got a preview this week with the stuff on Larry Summers.”

‘Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity’ by Paul Kingsnorth

“Paul Kingsnorth tends to think in the most sweeping terms imaginable,” said Alexander Nazaryan in The New York Times. In Against the Machine, his recent best seller, the British novelist, poet, and essayist urges us all to rediscover our humanity before “the Machine” fully exterminates it. And by “the Machine,” he means a belief system born during the Enlightenment that glorifies technological progress and has induced the people of the West to gradually cede power over their lives to government, corporations, and other large institutions. Kingsnorth has spread these ideas via his Substack, said Justin Ariel Bailey in Christianity Today, and he has now consolidated his missives into “a trenchant and terrifying account of what modern people have sacrificed in exchange for technology’s promise of power and autonomy.”

“Kingsnorth is a fascinating man,” said Corbin K. Barthold in City Journal. In his youth, he was an eco-activist who chained himself to bulldozers, and by his early 40s he was both an accomplished novelist and one of the U.K.’s leading environmentalists. But he lost faith in the green movement, and in 2014 he and his wife decamped to rural Ireland, where they homeschool their children and grow much of their food. Eventually, he joined the Eastern Orthodox Christian church. “Kingsnorth is a gifted stylist and a syncretic thinker,” and his ideas, at their best, are “sharp and layered.” In this “engrossing but often vexing” book, unfortunately, he “rests his boldest claims on little more than vibes.” He romanticizes the rural life of past centuries, ignoring its hardships, while his distrust of economic data “leaves his treatise fatally incomplete.”

Still, “the deeper provocations of Against the Machine are worth hearing, however gloomy,” said Cal Revely-Calder in The New Yorker. “Kingsnorth is surely right that public life has been overtaken by a narrow fixation on data and measurement” and that technologies of convenience are robbing us of skills, such as cooking, that were once foundational to the human experience. He tells us that the Machine has severed our ties to the four anchors of prior human cultures: people, place, prayer, and the past. But he has no concrete recommendations on how to fight the Machine beyond walking away from it—or at least limiting our participation in its growing omnipotence—while seeking to support small communities built upon older values. Even Kingsnorth, however, had to access the internet and work at a laptop to produce his book. In short, “we can’t walk away when there is no ‘away.’”

‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’ by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

“Given its punishing nature, why read this book?” asked Emma Brockes in The Guardian. Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide at 41 earlier this year, went public years ago with her allegations of being raped as a 16-year-old by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and subsequently being trafficked by the pair to Britain’s Prince Andrew and other powerful men. (Andrew, for his part, denies any sexual contact with Giuffre.) “But while the book is relentlessly, shockingly hard, it is also a clear-eyed and necessary account of how sex offenders operate.” The deft narrative constructed by Giuffre and a co-­writer “does what deposition can’t by taking us into the room with her.” And though it adds only one figure to the list of men Epstein allegedly trafficked underage girls to—an unnamed former prime minister—it does make Maxwell, the deceased Epstein’s accomplice, look entirely undeserving of clemency.

It’s also “the saddest story I’ve read in years,” said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. Giuffre describes being sexually abused throughout her childhood, beginning at age 7, allegedly at the hands of her father and a friend of his, both of whom eventually raped her. (Her father denies her accusations against him.) Giuffre says she later was raped in a car by two teenagers and by a stranger who picked her up when she ran away from a juvenile detention center. She was thus a vulnerable target at 16 when she landed a job at Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., resort and was quickly lured by Maxwell into Epstein’s twisted world. While “it will take years to unfurl the tentacles Epstein wrapped around finance, law, and politics,” Nobody’s Girl “floats free, self-­assured and self-­­contained—a true American tragedy.”

Some of Giuffre’s testimony here “feels unsatisfyingly neat,” said Claire Allfree in The Telegraph (U.K.). She oddly claims, for example, that the famous snapshot showing Prince Andrew and her together on the night of their alleged first sexual encounter was taken because she wanted to share the moment with her mother. Still, “the story is deeper and darker than this book can say,” because even Giuffre feared naming all accomplices she knew of. For standing up to Epstein, she “doesn’t deserve our scrutiny so much as our admiration.”

What happened

The U.K.’s King Charles III on Thursday stripped his brother Andrew of all his remaining titles, including prince, and forced him to vacate his Royal Lodge mansion near Windsor Castle to “move to alternative private accommodation,” Buckingham Palace said. The demotion, as the king seeks to “distance the royals” from Andrew’s “links to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal,” was “one of the most dramatic moves against a member of the royal family in modern British history,” Reuters said.

Who said what

Andrew had survived “years of shameful scandals” and “decades of tawdry headlines about shady business deals, inappropriate behavior and controversial friendships,” The Associated Press said. But a “new round of public outrage” over his Epstein links — including emails showing they had kept in touch longer than admitted, and a newly published memoir in which late Epstein trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre said Andrew acted as if “having sex with me was his birthright” — proved the final straw.

The “censures” against Andrew “are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” Buckingham Palace said. “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

What next?

The former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, was expected to move to a residence on the king’s Sandringham estate. The royal family hopes this “ripping off the bandage moment” will “finally draw a line under the endless oil slick of bad news stories about Andrew,” said BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan. But “it will take more than taking away his titles to dispel” the public anger over his perceived “unchecked privilege” and “ugly entitlement.”

It remains to be seen whether Prince Andrew will face further sanctions over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and alleged sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre. But what is clear as his accuser’s posthumous memoir hits the shelves is that Giuffre was “determined to share her story”, exposing the power and corruption that left “victims, like her, scarred after years of alleged abuse”, said The Independent.

In her 367-page book, co-authored with writer Amy Wallace, Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year aged 41, lays out her claims in “harrowing and sometimes explicit” detail. This is what we have learned.

Epstein and Maxwell’s horrific abuse

There were times Giuffre feared for her life, said London’s The Standard. During her two-year association with Epstein, she alleges he subjected her to sadomasochistic sex that caused her “so much pain that I prayed I would black out”. During this time she writes that she was passed around “scores of powerful, wealthy people” and repeatedly beaten and abused. “I believed that I might die as a sex slave,” she said.

Ghislaine Maxwell is described as a “molester with posh manners and an aristocratic pedigree” who played “den mother to Epstein’s family of dysfunctional girls”.

Giuffre also writes about her first meeting with the British socialite, who approached her while she was working as a teenager in a Mar-a-Lago spa. She describes being invited to Epstein’s house, where Maxwell allegedly instructed her to “do what I do”, before the pair sexually abused her. “The disappointment was excruciating. I blamed myself. ‘Is sex all anyone will ever want from me’,” she writes.

‘Brazen request’

Epstein and Maxwell “pleaded” with Giuffre to “have our baby”, said the New York Post. The proposal is said to have come with the promise of “round-the-clock nannies, a mansion and a $200,000 per month allowance”, but Giuffre would have to hand over all legal rights to the child.

Everything about the “brazen request felt wrong”, she writes. “There was no way I wanted to bring a child into the world for them to raise. What if the baby were female? Was the plan for Epstein and Maxwell to have me bring that little girl up until she reached puberty, then hand her over for them to abuse?”

An ‘orgy’ with Prince Andrew

Giuffre details her first meeting, aged 17, with Prince Andrew, then 41, at Maxwell’s London townhouse, said The Independent. “Just like Cinderella I was going to meet a handsome prince.”

At the house (the setting of the notorious photograph of the pair), she alleges Maxwell told her “you are to do for him what you do for Jeffrey”. They later had sex for the first time. Prince Andrew was, she said, “friendly enough, but still entitled – as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright”. Afterwards, he thanked her “in his clipped British accent”.

Around a month later, she alleges they had sex for a second time at Epstein’s home in Manhattan. The third and final time they had sex was during an “orgy” with Epstein involving “approximately eight other girls”, whom Giuffre describes as looking underage, on a private island in the Caribbean. Epstein “laughed about how they couldn’t really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with”.

Prince Andrew, who reached a financial settlement with Giuffre in 2022 with no acknowledgement of guilt, has consistently and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, and claims they “never had any sexual contact”.

Her reaction to the New York photos

Giuffre remembers seeing the photographs of Andrew with Epstein in New York’s Central Park that were “published in newspapers around the world in 2011”, said the BBC. Epstein had recently been released from prison for prostituting minors. “I was of course revolted to see two of my abusers together, out for a stroll,” she writes. “But mostly I was amazed that a member of the royal family would be stupid enough to appear in public with Epstein.”

She writes about feeling “disappointed” on learning of Epstein’s death, while he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking. “This wasn’t how justice was supposed to work out.” Later she adds that she hopes Prince Andrew will one day be “held to account”.

She has no regrets

In the final chapter of her memoir, Giuffre writes about her hopes of “preventing others suffering”, said The Independent. Dedicating the book to her “Survivor Sisters and anyone who has suffered sexual abuse”, she says the money she received in her settlement from Prince Andrew went towards setting up her foundation for preventing human trafficking.

While she doesn’t regret making her allegations public, she writes that the “constant telling and retelling has been extremely painful and exhausting. With this book, I seek to free myself from my past.”

The Duke of York has been marched down the honours hill, and persuaded to give up his royal titles after continued accusations about his association with the sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

It is a remarkable fall from grace for the late Queen’s favourite son, who was once second in line to the throne and widely feted as a Falklands War hero. Here’s how he went from popular prince to public pariah:

1999: first meets Epstein

Andrew is introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell. The British socialite, daughter of press baron Robert Maxwell, was Epstein's girlfriend at the time and had met Andrew when she was at university.

The trio quickly develop a “close friendship”, according to The Independent. Andrew is said to have invited the couple to Balmoral, his mother’s Scottish residence, that same year. In June 2000, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are guests at a party hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle and, that December, Epstein joins Andrew at a shooting weekend at Sandringham, the royal family’s Norfolk estate.

2001: infamous Virginia Giuffre photo taken

According to Virginia Giuffre, then known as Virginia Roberts, this is when she first meets Andrew. In a lawsuit filed in 2019, she said that, after a sweaty night of dancing at London’s Tramp nightclub, Andrew had sex with her at Maxwell’s townhouse – where the now-infamous photo of the three of them was allegedly taken. On two other occasions – in Epstein’s New York flat and at an “orgy” on Epstein’s private Caribbean island – she is forced to have sex with Andrew, she alleged. At the time, she is 17, and a minor under US law.

2008: Epstein jailed for sex offences

Epstein is charged by Florida prosecutors with “soliciting prostitution” and “soliciting prostitution with a minor”. He pleads guilty, after making a controversial plea deal that gives him immunity from other federal sex abuse charges, and is sentenced to 18 months in prison.

2010: Epstein released

Shortly after Epstein’s release from prison, Andrew is photographed walking with him in New York’s Central Park. Andrew later claimed his sole purpose in meeting Epstein then was to end their friendship.

2015-2016: Andrew linked to Epstein in court documents

In 2015, Buckingham Palace denies “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors” on the part of the prince, after he was named in US court papers related to an Epstein legal case.

A year later, Andrew is again named as part of a defamation suit brought by Giuffre against Maxwell, with Giuffre claiming she was paid $15,000 (£11,180) to have sex with the prince. But these court documents are sealed, and not released until 2019.

2019: Epstein dies; Newsnight interview

In August, the court documents from the Giuffre v Maxwell case are unsealed on public interest grounds. The next day, Epstein is found dead in the New York jail cell where he had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He has apparently committed suicide.

In November, Andrew gives a wide-ranging interview with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis. He says he has "no recollection" of ever meeting Giuffre, and could not have sex with her in March 2001 because he was at Pizza Express with his daughter on the day in question. He also refutes Giuffre’s description of him sweating while dancing because, he said, he has been unable to sweat since serving in the Falklands War.

The interview is widely seen as disastrous. Four days later, Andrew announces that he will be stepping back from public duties,

2021-2022: Giuffre sues; royal status downgraded

In August 2021, Giuffre files a civil suit against Andrew in the US, alleging that she was forced to have sex with him in the early 2000s. Andrew’s status as a member of the royal family is downgraded in early 2022, after a US judge rules that the case can go ahead. Andrew is stripped of his military affiliations, his royal patronages and the use of his HRH title, after more than 150 veterans write to the Queen.

In February, Andrew settles the civil case brought against him by Giuffre with an out-of-court payment of £12 million but no apology and no admission of liability.

2025: Guiffre dies; Andrew gives up titles

In April, Giuffre dies by suicide, aged 41, at her farm in Western Australia. In a statement, her family say that “she lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking”.

In October, the Mail on Sunday publishes a newly unearthed email proving that Andrew continued contact with Epstein after the 2010 New York meeting at which he’d claimed to end the friendship. The mail, dated 28 February 2011, says “we are in this together”. The BBC says the allegations are “intensely damaging” for the prince.

Just days later, after a “discussion” with the King and the Prince of Wales, Andrew gives up the use of his Duke of York title, as well as all his other remaining honours, including his membership of the Order of the Garter. It’s understood that he will not attend royal family events over Christmas. For the time being, he will continue living at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

In Giuffre’s memoir, published posthumously in late October, she claims that Andrew considered it “his birthright” to have sex with her. The release of the memoir adds to the “air of gloom at Buckingham Palace, which has tried to distance itself from Prince Andrew” and “heaps further pressure on the institution of monarchy”, said ITV News.

Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir is published today, and Buckingham Palace is braced for further allegations about Prince Andrew and his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

Extracts from “Nobody’s Girl” by Giuffre, who claims she was coerced into sex with Andrew when she was 17, have already rocked the royal family. “I vigorously deny the accusations against me,” Andrew said on Friday. But he also announced that his Duke of York title and Order of the Garter knighthood would be “put into abeyance”, much like his HRH title was in 2019.

Only an act of Parliament can remove Andrew’s dukedom completely but, such is the heat around the scandal, there are already moves afoot in the House of Commons to try to do just that.

What did the commentators say?

There was “a sense of relief” at the Palace when Andrew agreed to stop using his titles, said Sky News’ royal correspondent Laura Bundock. But now, there is “a sense of dread over what else could emerge”. Andrew’s “disgrace and downfall” is far from over, and it could be that we are “reaching the endgame”.

The Palace has “failed to grasp the magnitude” of the scandal, Andrew Lownie, the Yorks’ biographer, told The Telegraph. They are putting “a little bit of a plaster on a huge problem”. Charles should have had Andrew’s titles removed, rather than simply ordering him not to use them, and he should have forced Andrew to cooperate with US authorities about the extent of his dealings with Epstein. “I think this is just window dressing,” Lownie said. The fact that Andrew will still “get to live as he always has done” will make people “feel he hasn’t really paid any penalty for what he’s done”.

Charles apparently believed that putting Andrew’s titles in abeyance was “sufficient”, said Caroline Davies in The Guardian. But Prince William is “prepared to take a more ruthless approach if required” when he takes the throne. He reportedly considers his uncle a “threat” and “a reputational risk to the monarchy”.

When William becomes king, Andrew’s “limited role in public life will disappear entirely – starting with the coronation”, said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. A recent “surprisingly revealing” interview with actor Eugene Levy suggested that “banishing Andrew to Siberia” would not cause William “too many sleepless nights”.

It seems that the “nuclear royal option – to strip Andrew of his princely title grows more inevitable by the day”. This “will not be an easy or fast process, and is likely to damage the very institution of the monarchy”. But “the embarrassment and headlines” may be “worth it in the longer term”.

The Palace is “walking a fine line between cutting loose a reprobate member” and infuriating Andrew to the point that he “vents criticism of the main figures in the monarchy”, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. The “aloof tone and huffiness” of his statement on Friday signals that he still perceives his treatment as unfair, and “as the royals discovered in the Diana era” that can turn a person into “a powder keg”. The point is not whether or not Andrew “has a leg to stand on”; it’s that “he feels he does”. The more aggressively the palace seeks to exclude him, “the greater the risk of him seeking his own retribution”.

What next?

MPs have now lodged a parliamentary motion to strip Andrew of his dukedom. The government has previously said that it would be “guided” by the royal family on any decision to remove Andrew’s titles.

Whatever happens, Andrew’s “stubbornness” is “not going to change”, said McElvoy. The monarchy now has an “involuntary hermit” on its Windsor estate – still a part of the institution he was born into, however “inconvenient that may be”. How “sustainable this stand-off will prove is questionable”.

And the latest allegations are “just the tip of the iceberg”, Lownie told The Telegraph. The palace is “worried about new allegations that will emerge Stateside. They know there is more damaging stuff to come.”

Tell me about a woman “behaving poorly”, and I am likely to take her side, said Rebecca Reid in The i Paper. Sarah Ferguson is a case in point. When I was growing up in the 1990s, adults would often make snide comments about Fergie – for having her toes sucked, or fronting Weight Watchers ads. Her antics were deemed vulgar and unregal, but they endeared her to me. Now, though, Fergie turns out to have done something that cannot be laughed off as an awkward blunder.

‘Only denounced him to protect her career’

In March 2011, with pressure mounting on her and her ex-husband, the Duke of York, about their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, she gave an interview in which she said that she had made a “gigantic” mistake in accepting a £15,000 loan from the convicted child sex offender. She said that she “abhorred paedophilia”; and vowed never to have anything to do with him again. Yet last weekend, it emerged that only six weeks later, she’d sent Epstein a fawning email, in which she described him as a “supreme friend”.

The duchess told Epstein that he must feel “hellaciously let down” by her – and apologised “to you and your heart for that”. She promised that she’d not used “the P-word” [paedophile] about him, and said that she’d only denounced him to protect her career as a children’s author and philanthropist. This week, her spokesman insisted that she only wrote that email because Epstein was threatening to sue her for defamation, said Kate Mansey in The Times. “One wonders why she would have worried about such a lawsuit. But only she can answer that.”

‘She sold herself very cheap, did Fergie’

A patron of children’s charities gushing to a child sex offender? No wonder those charities were rapidly severing their links to her this week, said A.N. Wilson in the Daily Mail. Now the King, having recently readmitted Ferguson to some private events, may feel he has to banish her, to protect the royal family’s reputation, said Melanie McDonagh in The London Standard. Once again, Fergie finds herself in the gulag, brought down by her poor judgement and profligacy. After splitting up with Andrew, she lived so high on the hog, she ended up millions in debt; so in 2010, she accepted the £15,000 from the disgraced financier to stave off bankruptcy. “She sold herself very cheap, did Fergie.”

Maybe not, said royal biographer Andrew Lownie in the Daily Mail. I have heard that Epstein lent her more like £2m; she denies this, but it would explain why they stayed close. He wouldn’t have done this because he had a kind heart; he’d have expected some secret or favour or contact in return. So the question is, what did he want from her? And did she give it?

A letter written by Peter Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein for the financier's 50th birthday has been released by US lawmakers.

In it the UK's ambassador to Washington describes the late convicted paedophile as his "best pal". The note was contained in a "birthday book" compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 that features photographs, captions and tributes from Epstein's inner circle.

Mandelson's entries spanned 10 pages, including a message calling Epstein an "intelligent, sharp-witted man" who had "parachuted" into his life.

The tributes in the book "cast a sordid shadow over his circle of friends", said Rob Crilly in The Telegraph. "Their innuendo-laden messages, photos and drawings raise awkward questions about who knew what, and when."

Victims of Epstein said yesterday that Mandelson must be sacked after the publication of his message to the convicted paedophile.

Mandelson has reiterated previous comments expressing his regret over the relationship. That may be, said Mark Stone on Sky News, but there remains a huge disconnect between his assertion that "my knowledge of him is something that I regret" and this new revelation that Epstein was his "best pal".

The Epstein case has become an obsession for many on the Republican Right, so Trump's decision to close the case down, not to release files, and to dismiss it as a "hoax" was seen as a betrayal. Democrats joined the fray, accusing Trump of "hiding the Epstein list", and hinting that he himself might be implicated.

There remains very little hard proof to back up the more sensational claims: of a blackmail racket, of the widespread abuse of his victims by other powerful men (only Giuffre has publicly made such claims). But there are enough loose ends and clues to keep people asking questions.

What explains the fascination?

Epstein's story inspires both grim curiosity and conspiratorial thinking: there is the horrific nature of his crimes; his great wealth; his collection of famous friends; at least one attested cover-up; his sudden death in suspicious circumstances; and a series of unanswered questions.

The financier, who died in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, left a $578 million estate that included a palatial Manhattan townhouse, a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and two Caribbean islands, Little and Great Saint James. The FBI concluded that Epstein had abused more than 1,000 girls and young women. Court documents detail how he trafficked girls as young as 12 to his properties and held them in sexual servitude.

How did he become so wealthy?

It's something of a mystery. Born to working-class parents in Brooklyn, Epstein never graduated from college but was hired by New York's prestigious Dalton prep school, where he taught maths and physics in the mid-1970s. He was fired for "poor performance", but not before impressing Dalton parent and Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg, who hired him at the investment bank.

Epstein founded his own money management firm in 1988. He described himself as a "bounty hunter" who recovered stolen assets; he worked with the fraudster Steven J. Hoffenberg; but he was never a major Wall Street player. Various theories have circulated about the source of his riches – including that Epstein might have blackmailed influential people by collecting footage of them having sex with underage girls. What is known is that most of Epstein's money came from two clients, Victoria's Secret owner Leslie Wexner, and private equity mega-investor Leon Black, who together paid him a hefty $370 million in fees. Both Wexner and Black say they regret their ties with Epstein and deny wrongdoing.

Who did he associate with?

Epstein cultivated friendships with politicians, business leaders and celebrities. His social circle included Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Woody Allen, the former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, the law professor Alan Dershowitz, the former senator George Mitchell, the computer scientist Marvin Minsky – and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was first his girlfriend and then his accomplice and enabler. Some, including Clinton, Trump and Gates (all of whom deny wrongdoing) flew on Epstein's private plane, later nicknamed the "Lolita Express".

Trump and Epstein socialised frequently from the 1980s to early 2000s, and in 2002, Trump told New York Magazine that Epstein was a "terrific guy" who "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side". The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump had sent a bawdy message to Epstein on his 50th birthday, referring to a "secret". However, their friendship ended in 2004 amid a bidding war over a Palm Beach mansion.

When did the abuse start?

At Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial, a woman identified as Kate testified that Maxwell befriended her when she was 17 in 1994, promising to help her musical career. Maxwell pushed Kate to give Epstein massages that soon turned sexual, and to recruit other "cute" girls. It is clear that, in the early 2000s, Epstein entrapped scores of underage victims – many from broken homes – with the promise of modelling careers or other work. Courtney Wild, groomed by Epstein at 14, said she recruited "70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old" for him. Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, said she was "passed around like a platter of fruit" and forced to have sex with Epstein associates such as Prince Andrew (who denies this).

Many of the alleged crimes took place in Palm Beach and at Little Saint James. According to one lawsuit, a 15-year-old victim tried to swim away from the island; she was caught and returned.

When did law enforcement get involved?

In 2005, the stepmother of a 14-year-old told Palm Beach police that Epstein had paid her step-daughter to perform a naked massage. An investigation uncovered many more victims, but produced an infamous 2008 sweetheart deal: Epstein received an 18-month sentence on minor prostitution charges; in return, an FBI probe was called off and immunity was given for "any potential co-conspirators". He had a prison wing to himself and was chauffeured six days a week to his West Palm Beach office, before being released five months early. He abused more girls during and after his sentence, according to lawsuits.

It took an exposé in the Miami Herald many years later, in 2018, to stir up a national outcry. Trump's then labour secretary, Alexander Acosta – who had helped broker the 2008 deal as a federal prosecutor – resigned, and Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in July 2019. Weeks later, the financier was found dead, aged 66, in a New York jail cell with a bedsheet around his neck.

Is there much we still don't know?

The full scope of his abuse, and whether he had other accomplices, is still not clear. Campaigning last year, Trump pledged to release all the Department of Justice's files on Epstein, and in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have his client list on her desk. But in July, the Justice Department stated that the list didn't actually exist.

The FBI then concluded that there was no evidence incriminating third parties, or that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals; and it found that he had definitely died by suicide. Trump urged his supporters to move on from this "boring" case. This inflamed conspiracy theorists and others. "This was a man that was allowed to abuse girls and women for two decades," said Julie K. Brown, who reported on Epstein for the Miami Herald in 2018. "The victims deserve to know whether our government did the job that they were supposed to do."

When President Donald Trump announced JD Vance as his vice presidential pick, he hailed him as someone who would "do everything he can to help me make America great again." But while Vance played the well-established role of campaign pitbull during the race, he has since kept a comparatively lower public profile compared to the televised bombast of other Cabinet members or favored presidential advisers. When asked in February if Vance was his successor to lead the MAGA movement in 2028, Trump demurred, saying it was too early to speculate, while affirming his VP was "very capable."

This week, however, Trump was noticeably more enthusiastic about Vance's future. He called him "most likely, in all fairness," his MAGA successor and "probably favorite at this point."

In 'pole position' with the MAGA base

Trump's qualified endorsement of Vance "appeared to be his strongest public backing" for the vice president's "political future," The New York Times said. By suggesting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio "maybe would get together with JD" as well, Trump signaled a "shift in his thinking over time," after having previously "floated both Vance and Rubio as possible successors" in May. While Trump has "singled out" both men in the past, he has "mostly avoided choosing a favorite," said CBS News.

Vance has "increasingly become one of the president's chief problem solvers," said CNN, with the vice president often involving himself in the administration's "key priorities" right as they "reach their thorniest points." The role has placed Vance in "pole position with the MAGA base early on," even if it also risks "dooming his chances down the road" with a "broader electorate" growing frustrated with the Trump administration. Trump holds "considerable influence with the Republican base," and any signs that he's picked a successor "carries significant implications," said Reuters. That the president has "not hesitated to give Vance high-visibility assignments" is matched by Vance's eagerness to do Trump's "bidding" on everything from "his relationship with Ukraine" to the "fight over records related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal," said The Associated Press.

'Thanking his lucky stars'

Vance's growing public profile comes as the Trump administration struggles to contain the spiraling fallout from the ongoing Epstein scandal, which has engulfed the Justice Department and piqued the furor of the party's MAGA base. Given Trump's well-documented relationship with Epstein, Vance is "playing the part of the good soldier" while observing how Trump's "bumbling" has pulled the president into the "conspiratorial narrative" surrounding the Epstein saga, said USA Today. The vice president is likely "thanking his lucky stars" for Trump's handling of the case as he watches the president dig his "Epstein hole deeper and deeper."

Opportunism and an increased profile aside, polling suggests Vance's popularity has "steadily declined" since he assumed office, Newsweek said. While his appeal is "hardening among conservatives," it has eroded among "moderates, liberals, younger voters and communities of color."

No one was closer to Jeffrey Epstein than British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US for recruiting, grooming and trafficking girls as young as 14 to be sexually abused.

Maxwell's lawyers are appealing her conviction, and have also requested a pardon from Donald Trump in exchange for testifying "openly and honestly" about Epstein's circle before Congress. "I'm allowed to give her a pardon," the US president has said. "But it's something I have not thought about." Five years after saying, "I wish her well" when she was arrested, "Trump is still playing dumb about Maxwell," said Chris Brennan in USA Today.

'A carrot' to testify

Maxwell has been subpoenaed for questioning before the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. (She has requested immunity before testifying.) Republicans, many of whom have long exploited conspiracy theories about the Epstein files, have an incentive to let her think that the possibility of clemency exists. It serves better as "a carrot" than it would as a reality, said CNN's Aaron Blake. "What better way to guide what she says than to have her believe maybe the administration could do her a solid?"

But Maxwell "clearly has credibility issues" (she was also convicted of lying under oath). And a pardon "would only reinforce the idea that this was some kind of corrupt bargain".

Trump doesn't "dispense pardons liberally", said MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos, and, when he has, he's "got a lot in return, politically", as with the mass pardons for the Jan 6 Capitol Hill rioters. Right now, Trump is "trying to distance himself from Epstein", and a Maxwell pardon is probably "too radioactive".

'A betrayal' of Maga

Maxwell was also interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over two days last week. If she said something to clearly distance Trump from any involvement in Epstein's crimes, that might be a way for the president to show his reluctance to release the Epstein files is not because they implicate him.

But "the very people" Trump "wishes to quiet down will certainly raise another ruckus if he pardons her", said USA Today's Brennan.

In fact, pardoning Maxwell would break Maga, said Oliver Bateman in Unherd. While some Trump allies are suggesting a view of Maxwell as Epstein's scapegoated victim, others, including Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, are "openly suspicious" that Maxwell's co-operation is only motivated by self-interest. This "hits at the core contradiction" of Maga: it's a movement "built on the promise of exposing elite corruption" so, if "their champion" now pardons Epstein's co-conspirator, "that could be a betrayal too far".

And a reason to stay home at the next election.

"It's hard not to chuckle at the mess the Trump administration has made for itself" over Jeffrey Epstein, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. For years, the president and his allies stoked conspiracy theories about the disgraced financier, who was found dead in his cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls.

Back in his days as a podcaster, Dan Bongino, now deputy director of the FBI, was among those who insisted that Epstein was murdered by the deep state and that the release of a "client list" would expose a cabal of elite, liberal paedophiles. In February, Pam Bondi, Trump's attorney general, claimed that the client list was "sitting on my desk". All, it seemed, was about to be revealed.

But then, this month, officials abruptly announced that there was no evidence to support the conspiracy theories. Epstein had died by suicide; Bondi had been referring to his case file, not a client list. In response, "Maga world went bonkers". Furious right-wingers accused Trump of a cover-up. Maga hats were ritually burned. The monster he created has turned on him.

Promises discarded

So it seems there are limits, after all, to Trump's hold over his fanbase, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Until now, they have seemed to believe anything he told them. A journalist or politician could "go from Well Respected to Failing Loser and back again as many times as needed". Promises could be made, then discarded.

But there has been no appeasing Maga fury over the Epstein reversal. Trump hit back, blaming "weaklings" for wasting time on a "bullshit" issue, saying he didn't "want their support any more". He also floated a new, clearly contradictory, line of defence: the Epstein files "did exist, but they were anti-Trump disinformation created by Democrats". But none of the usual tactics worked this time – his fans "just grew angrier".

Trump will struggle to shake off this scandal, said Andrew Day in The American Conservative. He and Epstein were friends for more than a decade, so the media will keep turning up awkward facts. Last week The Wall Street Journal ran a story about a lewd 50th birthday message that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein, with a doodle of a naked woman, signed off with the words: "May every day be another wonderful secret." Trump insisted the card was a "fake" and has now sued.

Breach will never fully heal

Trump's best course is to make all the records public. Transparency would help, said National Review. It's hard to understand, for instance, why Epstein's autopsy report hasn't been released. Trump has now asked for court documents to be published, but with many victims and witnesses still alive, and Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell still appealing, care will need to be taken about revealing legally sensitive information.

The breach between Trump and his Maga fans will never fully heal, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. This is the third recent disagreement between him and his base, which also opposed his bombing of Iran and his decision to restore aid to Ukraine.

The Epstein row is by far the most serious, said Matt Ford in The New Republic. It threatens to destroy a key mythology that Trump supporters have built around him since he entered politics. The Maga movement contains many people who are genuinely convinced that their opponents – Democratic politicians, liberal media figures, left-wing billionaires – belong to a secret child-abuse ring. The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that Trump is part of a clandestine organisation working to root out this cabal, and that he's destined to expose the paedophiles on a day known as "the Storm", and bring them to justice. The Epstein row has shattered this myth. Trump is no longer the crusader – "just another politician looking to get out of a jam".

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal is not going away, but President Donald Trump would like to change the subject. That might be why he accused former President Barack Obama of treason this week. The question now is whether Trump's administration will bring charges against Obama.

Trump on Tuesday "escalated his distract-and-deflect strategy" to pivot from reporters' questions about Epstein by accusing Obama of wrongdoing, said The New York Times. Obama tried to "lead a coup" with intelligence assessments that said Russia "favored" Trump's 2016 election, Trump said during a question session at the White House. That accusation is a "weak attempt at distraction," said a spokesman for Obama. Trump suggested he was ready for prosecutions. "It's time to go after people," he said.

The Justice Department on Wednesday formed a "Strike Force" to investigate Trump's allegations against Obama, said The Hill. Investigators will "leave no stone unturned to deliver justice," said Attorney General Pam Bondi. One challenge: The Senate Intelligence Committee (including then-Sen. Marco Rubio, now Trump's secretary of state) in 2017 released a report agreeing that Russia supported Trump's election, though those activities did not include changing or stealing votes. The accusations against Obama are "patently false and unfounded," said James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence.

What did the commentators say?

Trump has "mused about locking up political opponents" since his first run for president, said Garry Kasparov at his Substack newsletter. What happens next depends on "how voters and politicians respond," but there is a good chance that the "public is desensitized" to Trump's breaking of norms after 10 years in politics. Obama will "not find himself behind bars tomorrow, or next month, or even next year." Trump has declared his intent, however. "Public passivity is permission."

The president has "all but ordered his law-enforcement minions to arrest, prosecute and imprison" Obama, said Jackie Calmes at the Los Angeles Times. Trump has seemingly forgotten that last year he "persuaded a deferential Supreme Court to give presidents virtual immunity from criminal prosecution." Or he may believe that notable ruling applies only to himself.

The public "should avoid taking the bait" of Trump's attempts to distract from the Epstein scandal, but false allegations of treason "must command Americans' attention," said Calmes. The irony is that Trump is building a "false case" against Obama to divert attention from the "very real case" involving Epstein.

What next?

"MAGA's expectations are stratospheric," said Axios. Obama has long been one of the right's "biggest bogeymen." Failure by the Justice Department to prosecute the former president "could be seen as a betrayal" by a GOP base already disappointed by Trump's handling of the Epstein matter.

The "biggest problem" for the case against Obama is the "sheer lack of evidence of any wrongdoing," said Aaron Blake at CNN. Even if that were not the case, Obama could "well be immune from any such prosecution" because of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling Trump obtained in his defense against criminal charges stemming from Jan. 6. Trump's overall attitude seems to be "immunity for me, not for thee."

Having "nurtured conspiracy theories for his entire political career," Donald Trump is suddenly in danger of "being consumed by one," said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. His MAGA movement is "in revolt" this week over the insistence by Trump, his Justice Department, and the FBI that there are no "incriminating client lists" or scandalous new documents to be revealed regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls. The statement sparked immediate "fury and disappointment" on the Right, where MAGA influencers—including now FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino—have insisted for years that Epstein was murdered by the Deep State and that the release of a client list would expose a sprawling cabal of elite, liberal pedophiles. Most of the MAGA rage was initially directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said in February she had the Epstein list "sitting on my desk" and then announced last week no list existed. Trump then began taking fire when he implored "weakling" supporters to "not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about." But MAGA influencers like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon are continuing to stoke MAGA's rage, warning Trump, in Jones' words, that "this isn't going away."

Trump's quandary is that he's "in the Epstein files," said William Kristol in The Bulwark. He was friends with Epstein—a neighbor in Palm Beach, Fla.—for 15 years. Trump once said they had a shared taste in "beautiful women," adding with a chuckle that Epstein liked his "on the younger side." Trump flew more than once on Epstein's notorious jet, the "Lolita Express," and author Michael Wolff recently claimed that Epstein showed him photos taken at his home of topless young women sitting on Trump's lap. No wonder his DOJ says that "no further disclosure" of Epstein documents, photos, and videos "would be warranted." To add to the suspicion, said Steve Benen in MSNBC.com, Trump is now saying that the "Epstein files" were "written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey," and his other political enemies. So is Trump's position now that the files "do exist but they're fake?"

Files from the lengthy federal investigations no doubt exist, said Andrew McCarthy in National Review. But "the Justice Department and the FBI are not in the transparency business," and it would be highly unethical for them to release documents naming people who associated with Epstein but were not charged with crimes. Good luck convincing MAGA of that, said Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo. Its cultlike belief that a cabal of "rich and powerful pedophiles" controls the world "runs really, really deep," and if Trump keeps stonewalling, "the Epstein wildfire" will continue to burn out of control.

"This has to be bewildering" for Trump, said Amanda Marcotte in Salon. If his fans can shrug off his own history of sexual assault, why are they so hung up on Epstein? The answer lies in "the age of the victims." It's only by positioning themselves as righteous warriors against pedophilia—the through line of MAGA conspiracy theories from Pizzagate to QAnon—that Trump's supporters find "moral absolution." Trump fans "need the Epstein files" if they're to keep seeing themselves as "the good guys." If they think Trump is protecting pedophiles, they may see him as another villain—and themselves for what they are: his "accomplices."

Donald Trump has ordered the US Justice Department to unseal additional documents about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The president's about-turn comes "after days of sustained pressure from some of his most loyal supporters" for further disclosures in the case, said the BBC, and hours after he threatened to sue over a newspaper report claiming he once sent Epstein a "bawdy" birthday letter.

What did the 'Trump letter' say?

According to the The Wall Street Journal, the letter to Epstein, sent in 2003, featured several lines of text "framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker". Trump's signature is a "squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair" and the message concludes, "Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret".

Trump has vowed to sue the "ass off" the Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. He posted on his Truth Social network that the letter was "Fake" and a "Scam", and phoned the paper to tell reporters that "I never wrote a picture in my life". But this episode is another reminder that the scandal still swirling around his late friend has become increasingly uncomfortable for the president.

What was the Trump-Epstein relationship?

Trump was friendly with Epstein for over a decade and was pictured at parties with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell several times in the 1990s and early 2000. Trump's private club, Mar-a-Lago, featured in Maxwell's later trial and conviction for sex trafficking.

In 2019, Trump said he and Epstein had had a "falling out" and they hadn't spoken for 15 years. But flight logs released during Maxwell's trial showed that Trump flew on Epstein's private plane several times between 1993 and 1997.

Epstein died in a New York prison cell in April 2019 while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges – more than a decade after his prior conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, for which he was registered as a sex offender.

Trump has claimed he had "no idea" that Epstein had molested women. In 2002, however, he'd told New York magazine that Epstein was a "terrific guy" and a "lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

Why weren't the Epstein files released?

For several years, Trump fanned the flames of the Maga conspiracy theory that the Joe Biden administration had suppressed details about Epstein and his supposed "client list" of "elites" who were molesting children. Many of Trump's most ardent supporters assumed that, when Trump became president again, this list would be made public.

But, earlier this month, the US Justice Department said there was no evidence that Epstein had a "client list", and the department has no plans to release any new documents on the matter. Far from drawing a line under the story, the announcement meant calls to "release the Epstein files have only grown louder", said Vox.

Elon Musk had already caused a stir by claiming that Trump himself was named in Epstein files, and that "crack in the president's support system" became "a chasm" after his administration "suddenly reversed course on its longstanding promises" to reveal more on Epstein, said the The New York Times.

It's all left Trump "swimming against the tide", said "News Agents USA" presenter Jon Sopel in Indy Voices. "For the first time, the base is not buying what Trump is selling" and now "someone who died six years ago is posing the greatest challenge to the president's authority since he returned to the White House".

What is Trump saying now?

Earlier this week, Trump turned against his own supporters, calling them gullible "weaklings" for questioning his administration's handling of the Epstein investigation, and calling the whole furore "boring" and "bullshit".

Then he said FBI should investigate "the Jeffrey Epstein hoax" as a criminal conspiracy against him. In an interview with Real America's Voice, he argued that the files from the federal investigation into Epstein shouldn't be released in full because they might include false information about him planted there by Democratic rivals. "I can imagine what they put into files," he said.

And now Trump's performed another U-turn, ordering Justice Department officials to unseal "all pertinent" grand jury testimony in the Epstein case. But it remains "unclear" exactly what testimony Trump is referring to, and whether or not the courts will approve "public release" of them, said the BBC.

President Donald Trump has been known to embrace a conspiracy theory or two during his political career. So it is no small irony that his administration's attempt to debunk theories surrounding the 2019 jailhouse death of Jeffrey Epstein is producing a backlash from the president's biggest fans.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones "melted down" after the Justice Department said there was no evidence Epstein was murdered or had a "client list" of famous and powerful people who participated in his crimes against underage women, said HuffPost. The DOJ announcement is "over the top sickening," Jones wrote on X. He was not alone. Right-wing figures like Laura Loomer, Jack Posobiec and Tim Pool also criticized the findings. White House officials privately acknowledged the announcement was playing badly with Trump's "fiercely conspiracist" supporters, said Rolling Stone. Trump's MAGA fans are "gonna be so mad at us," said one anonymous official.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel had previously "egged on" theories about the so-called "Epstein Files," said Vox. Now the two "can't — or won't — deliver" on previous promises. For right-wingers "deeply bought into" Epstein theories, then, there are two possible conclusions: Either Trump, Bondi and Patel are "getting snowed" by the deep state, or "they're knowing participants in the cover-up."

What did the commentators say?

The backlash highlights how the Trump administration is "in hock to some of the most deranged conspiracy theorists imaginable," said Matt Gertz at Media Matters for America. The right-wing media ecosystem is "built to manufacture and distribute conspiracy theories" for an audience eager to believe them. Bondi and Patel "boosted their standing" with Trump supporters by "echoing" claims that an "Epstein reckoning was imminent." Their inability to deliver on those claims once in power was inevitable. The administration "trapped itself."

"This is what happens when the dog catches the car," said Chris Cillizza at The Daily Beast. Trump and his allies "spent years attacking" the so-called "Deep State." Now they have become it. The problem with conspiracy thinking is "you can't just tell people to turn it off" when it becomes inconvenient. Bondi and others stoked the notion that they could and would expose a "Democratic cover-up" involving Epstein for short-term plaudits and to gain power. Having "spread those seeds and watered them for years," the Trump administration cannot stop the conspiracist flowers from blooming.

What next?

The Epstein announcement is one of several issues creating "unrest in the MAGA ranks," said The Washington Post. Trump is also advocating for a new policy that would "spare swaths of migrant workers from deportations" while resuming weapons shipments to Ukraine. The MAGA movement has "never been in more turmoil," said a "person close to Trump." One person who wants to take advantage: Elon Musk. He wants to make the Epstein Files a priority for his new "America Party," said The Hill.

Trump himself could avoid the backlash. Fox News joined the "MAGA meltdown" over Epstein, said The Independent. Network commentators like Jesse Watters steered clear of directly criticizing the president, however. Watters instead blamed "the feds" and Bondi. "This stinks," Watters said on his Monday night show. "This just reeks!"

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein of sexually exploiting her as a teenager, has died aged 41. She died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia on Friday, her publicist confirmed.

In a statement, her family said: "Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors. Despite all the adversity she faced in her life, she shone so bright. She will be missed beyond measure."

The Epstein allegations

Giuffre became an advocate for sex trafficking survivors "after emerging as a central figure in Epstein's prolonged downfall", said The Associated Press.

She came forward publicly with her story after the initial investigation into Epstein's crimes ended in only an 18-month jail term for the late financier. He made a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty to relatively minor state-level charges of soliciting prostitution.

In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's Florida home, when she was approached in 2000 by Epstein's girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre said Maxwell hired her as a masseuse, "but the couple effectively made her a sexual servant" for Epstein and his associates. That included Prince Andrew, whom she says she was forced to have sex with three times while she was 17 and 18. "Ghislaine said, 'I want you to do for him what you do for Epstein'," Giuffre told NBC's Dateline in 2019.

Prince Andrew has always vehemently denied the accusations, claiming in a now infamous 2019 Newsnight interview that he had "no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever". In 2022, he settled Giuffre's lawsuit out of court, agreeing to a "substantial donation" to her charity, though admitting no liability.

Unanswered questions

Giuffre's death "will leave questions that are now likely to remain unanswered", said the BBC. Her name will "always be associated with the scandals and criminality" surrounding Epstein and his associates. As a young woman "she had the strength to stand up to a toxic mix of power, money and privilege in the circle surrounding Epstein, who sexually exploited so many girls".

"In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight," her family said in a statement issued on Saturday. But there will now be suspicions that "the long shadow of Epstein's poisonous misuse of wealth and influence has indirectly claimed another victim".

Giuffre's passing "will weigh heavily on all involved in this most shameful of episodes", said The Telegraph, and the accusations against Prince Andrew, though "unproven", will be "linked to him for life". For Prince Andrew, Giuffre's death "draws the most tragic of lines under a period of his life he hoped would end in redemption, and now will not".

On Christmas Day, Prince Andrew walked behind his older brother as the royals made their way to church at Sandringham, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction – signalling the "tentative rehabilitation" of the disgraced duke. Friends of the King attributed this to his "typical kindness", and a promise he'd made to his mother to look after Andrew. Alas, the gesture was "badly timed", coming only days after a court in the US had ruled that a trove of papers relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should be made public. 

The documents have contained no bombshells; but they've added new detail to existing claims (which Andrew denies) such as that the teenage girl he was alleged to have had sex with said that she had been paid $15,000 to do so. And the publicity has caused a new furore. Charles is said not to want to banish his brother, but he may have to: Epstein sleaze continues to tarnish the duke, and the Palace by association.

Andrew 'distracts attention'

Andrew's supporters claim he is being used to distract attention from other Epstein associates with more to hide, said Victoria Ward in The Daily Telegraph. And while his name does loom large he is by no means the only person named in the papers (all from a libel case brought by Andrew's accuser Virginia Giuffre against Epstein's procurer Ghislaine Maxwell), said The Times. 

Stephen Hawking comes up, in an email in which Epstein offered a reward for information to disprove claims that the physicist had taken part in an orgy on his private island. (Hawking had visited it while attending an Epstein-funded conference.) There are also references to Bill Clinton: Epstein told one of his victims that the former president (who denies any involvement in Epstein's crimes) "likes them young", and he's mentioned in connection with sex tapes that Epstein allegedly recorded. 

But most of the references to VIPs are not related to improper behaviour. The papers are mainly about Epstein.

'No stranger to blackmail'

Rich and powerful men flocked to Epstein, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times, because he promised excitement, money and – crucially – access to young girls. 

These women behaved like honey traps. When Maxwell ordered them to give "erotic massages" (code for sex) to Epstein's guests, were they being filmed? Only one of Epstein's victims is known to have mentioned sex tapes; but there were cameras in the rooms at his homes, and Epstein was "no stranger to blackmail". 

So you wonder: did he use compromising footage to get away with his abuses when he was alive? And how are the men who visited his "sex island", and made use of trafficked girls, still getting away with it now?

Prince Andrew is among the high-profile figures named in newly released US court documents detailing the extensive network of friends and business associates of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

The now unsealed documents were part of a lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's many accusers, against Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Epstein's. That case was settled in 2017 before Maxwell's 2021 criminal conviction for sex trafficking and similar charges over procuring teenage girls for Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.  

The 900 or so documents have been made public after a judge's order to reveal the true identities of almost 200 "John and Jane Does" associated with the lawsuit, with many of those named in the documents already identified by the media or as a result of Maxwell's criminal trial.

'Always going to be uncomfortable'

The release of the documents has been "inaccurately hyped" as revealing Epstein's "client list", said Morning Brew, but being named in the documents does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, as the list names victims, contacts, employees and other associates. 

Nevertheless, being named in these files from a case brought by Giuffre "was always going to be an uncomfortable moment" for Prince Andrew, said The Times. 

The Duke of York was sued by Giuffre in 2021 under New York's Child Victims Act, which allowed people who claimed to have been sexually abused as a minor to bring complaints otherwise barred by the statute of limitations. The case was settled out of court a few months later, reportedly for around £12 million. 

Among the now released files is a "lengthy deposition" from Johanna Sjoberg, a college student hired as an assistant for Epstein. Sjoberg claimed the prince groped her breast while she was with an underage Giuffre at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2001. 

In the deposition, Sjoberg described how the three of them posed for a photograph with a "Spitting Image" puppet of Andrew, which had been placed on Giuffre's lap. She described how she then "sat on Andrew's lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet's hands and put it on Virginia's breast, and so Andrew put his on mine", she said.

The accusation may no longer bring "legal liability" – the statute of limitations has now elapsed – but Andrew may be advised "to avoid visiting" the US in case further allegations are made, said the paper.  

'A royal outcast'

Buckingham Palace has previously said the allegations are "categorically untrue". But it has "declined to comment on the newly-released documents, saying it no longer speaks on behalf of the Duke of York who no longer carries out royal duties", said the BBC.

Having been stripped of his royal titles and patronages by the late Queen in 2022, Andrew has "little to lose", but the details unveiled in these unsealed documents still feel like "a fresh embarrassment", said Sky News's royal correspondent Laura Bundock. Having put in a "cheerful" appearance at Sandringham over Christmas, he may still be welcomed in royal circles privately, "but publicly he remains a royal outcast".

The appearance of the Epstein documents "is a reminder that this tawdry affair will hang over the wider Royal Family for a considerable time to come", added Alexander Larman in The Spectator. "On an existential level", it will continue to be "vastly embarrassing that a senior royal, one once believed to be the glamorous, gung-ho public face of the monarchy, has been embroiled in a scandal of this kind", he added.

TalkTV has come under fire for broadcasting an interview in which Ghislaine Maxwell claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison.

Speaking to Jeremy Kyle in a pre-recorded interview from prison in Tallahassee, Florida, the British socialite said she was “shocked” to hear of the disgraced financier’s apparent suicide at a New York City federal jail in 2019. “I believe that he was murdered,” she said.

Maxwell, daughter of media baron Robert Maxwell, was sentenced in 2021 to 20 years in jail for helping Epstein abuse teenage girls. During the show, Kyle addressed the question of whether Maxwell was paid for the interview. “Let me tell you categorically… not a damn penny and nor would we,” he said.

Nevertheless, the interview has proven controversial and has revived a conversation on what TalkTV and its broadcasting competitors are willing to do to attract viewers.

‘Grotesque’ interview

Kyle has been “pulled apart on social media” for giving airtime to Maxwell, said Metro. For victims to not be “given the same right” must “feel absolutely awful”, wrote one viewer on Twitter.

Chloe Combi, an author, tweeted that broadcasting such an interview is “grotesque” and “like Fred West phoning into a DIY programme”.

If Maxwell “derived narcissistic pleasure out of helping Epstein”, then it’s “fair to say she will gain the same out of continued publicity”, wrote Holly Baxter and Clémence Michallon for the Independent.

Describing the interview as “narcissistic and dangerous”, they said Ghislaine Behind Bars was a “disconcertingly jaunty-feeling title that gives the interview a ‘what she did next’, reality TV-style flavour”.

‘Crap’ ratings

TalkTV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has struggled to attract the viewers it wants. In an interview with The New Statesman last year, the channel’s flagship presenter Piers Morgan admitted that his “crap” ratings “used to eat away at my soul like a flesh-eating bug”.

In response to that disappointment, Morgan has invited “some pretty controversial interviewees” on to his show, said the magazine, including online influencer Andrew Tate and InfoWars host Alex Jones.

However, the guest who finally delivered numbers for TalkTV was the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. The interview, and clips from it, helped Piers Morgan Uncensored draw 48.3 million views across YouTube and other online platforms in the week in which it aired. Between 8pm and 9pm on the night it was shown, TalkTV was the UK’s seventh most popular channel.

Meanwhile, TalkTV’s rival GB News celebrated a “surprise resurgence” in November, said the inews site. But the success came at a price because “even as the ‘insurgent’ broadcaster pats itself on the back, it is being forced to deny claims that it is winning more viewers by giving a platform to anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists”.

Indeed, said The Guardian last week, the channel “continues to blunder into image-tarnishing controversies”, which see it fall foul of Ofcom and potential advertisers alike, leading to an in-house drive to “clean up its image” and enforce “discipline”.

Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved to a low-security prison in Florida where she can take part in yoga classes and try her hand at baking while she sees out the remainder of her sentence.

The former socialite was found guilty of recruiting and trafficking underage girls for disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein last December and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

According to the Bureau of Prisons, Maxwell has been moved to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Tallahassee, a low-security, all-female prison in Florida’s capital, near where the majority of her crimes took place.

The decision went against the wishes of her lawyers, who had requested that she serve her sentence at FCI Danbury in Connecticut, a minimum-security prison that was the inspiration for the hit Netflix series Orange is the New Black. The Guardian said experts had described the jail as being “‘like Disneyland’ compared with the Brooklyn institution” where Maxwell has been held since her arrest in July 2020.

The Metro said the socialite “hated her time at the notoriously tough” Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, where Epstein was found dead in his cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The Times reported that the 60-year-old, “who lived a life of luxury before her arrest, said she shared her tiny cell with rats, was served food infested with maggots and was abused by guards”. Her lawyers repeatedly complained she was being held in solitary confinement and her family even filed a complaint with the United Nations over her treatment.

Judge Alison Nathan, who presided over Maxwell’s case, had supported her lawyers’ request to the Bureau of Prisons for Maxwell to be sent to FCI Danbury, “known as ‘Club Fed’ because of its amiable conditions”, said The Telegraph.

“It is not clear why the law enforcement agency went against the Judge’s decision”, added the paper.

What is life in FCI Tallahassee like?

The prison opened in 1938 with the capacity to house 755 female-only prisoners. Inmates at FCI Tallahassee are issued with an inmate identification card which must be worn at all times, and woken at 6am every day.

Each prisoner shares a cell with one other person and staff may search cells at any time for contraband or stolen property. The only approved uniform is khaki pants, khaki shirt, knickers, bra, socks and authorised shoes.

Maxwell will be allowed to wear a plain wedding band, “even though her marriage to former tech entrepreneur Scott Borgerson is over and they are understood to be divorcing”, said The Metro.

According to a prison consulting firm, Zoukis Consulting Group, inmates can take part in yoga, a talent show and watch movies, while a prospectus for the facility shows detainees playing sports like softball, basketball and volleyball. They are also able to try hobbies like painting, leather-work, art and ceramics.

The list of apprenticeships available for Maxwell includes electrician, baker, horticulturist, plumber and cosmetologist, “a pursuit which may include massages”, noted the Daily Mail in reference to the way she and Epstein would exploit underage girls.

The paper said that while at the MDC, Maxwell “had already impressed other inmates by teaching them yoga and English [and] she will likely continue to do so in her new prison”. She will also be able to continue learning Russian, a skill she took up after her arrest.

She will have plenty of time to become fluent as the Bureau of Prisons website indicates Maxwell will not be eligible for release until 17 July 2037.

Ghislaine Maxwell, a former socialite and close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking by a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.

Maxwell is 60 years old, meaning that even with time off for good behavior and credit for the two years she has already spent in prison, Maxwell won't see the outside of a jail cell until well into her 70s, The New York Times notes.

In December 2021, Maxwell was convicted of five charges related to her procurement of young women — some as young as 14 — for Epstein to sexually abuse. "It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein," Maxwell said at the sentencing hearing. Her lawyers say she plans to appeal her conviction.

Epstein was found hanged in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex crime charges. In February, Jean-Luc Brunel — another Epstein associate who was awaiting trial in France for allegedly raping minors — was found dead in his cell under similar circumstances. According to The New York Post, Maxwell was placed on suicide watch on Friday. Her lawyers insisted that their client is not suicidal.

The Duke of York and his ex-wife have been named in a High Court battle brought by a Turkish millionaire who claims she was scammed out of almost £40m by a fraudster.

Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson allegedly received “suspicious” payments totalling more than £1m on the orders of Selman Turk, a former Goldman Sachs banker accused of cheating Nebahat Isbilen out of her fortune.

The payments to the Royal included a £750,000 “gift” from 76-year-old Isbilen, “who was told she was paying for help with a passport so she could flee political persecution in her homeland”, reported The Telegraph.

A further payment of £350,000 linked to Turk was allegedly made to Andrew through a third party account, and £225,000 is said to have been transferred to his former wife, with whom the duke still lives.

There is “no suggestion of any wrongdoing on their part” and Andrew has repaid the £750,000, said the Daily Mail. But there was “no explanation from the prince about the mystery” surrounding the payment “or of how he became involved”, the paper reported, after a spokesperson for Andrew declined to comment.

Payment puzzle

According to The Telegraph, the first payment to the duke “came days after Mr Turk had won an award” at a Dragon’s Den-style project known as Pitch@Palace set up by Andrew.

In her witness statement, Isbilen said: “I can only wonder if there is any connection between this event and the Duke of York transfer.”

Isbilen came to live in Britain after her politician husband was jailed in 2015 following an attempted coup in Turkey. She entrusted her $87m (£66m) fortune to London-based Turkish businessman Turk, who was tasked with moving her wealth out of reach of her husband’s political enemies in Turkey, the court heard.

Isbilen claims that Turk “breached fiduciary obligations he owed to her” and “advances claims in deceit”.

Court documents show that her lawyer Jonathan Tickner wrote to Andrew in March last year, but the royal “‘declined’ to respond to questions or give any account of his relationship” with Turk, The Telegraph reported.

‘Dogged by criticism’

The High Court court battle comes just a month after Andrew settled a civil case in the US with his sexual abuse accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. The duke has denied all of Giuffre’s allegations against him.

Although Andrew has not commented publicly on the fraud case, a spokesperson for his ex-wife told The Telegraph that “the duchess was completely unaware of the allegations that have since emerged” against Turk and was “naturally concerned by what has been alleged against him”.

But despite there being no suggestion of wrongdoing by the Yorks in the latest legal scandal, they have been “dogged by criticism of their financial affairs”, the paper said. The pair have made headlines over dealings including “taking money from Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier and convicted paedophile, and the sale of their former marital home for an inflated fee to the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s autocratic former president”.

The duke has also been accused of having repeatedly exploited his role as Britain’s trade envoy to further his own financial interests.

And he faced a fresh wave of criticism this week, after escorting the Queen at a memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh. Some commentators slated the move, which Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror described as a “cynical, gratuitously offensive attempt by the Queen to rehabilitate” her “shamed son”.

Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean islands, where he was accused of abusing dozens of young women and girls, have been put up for sale.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Little St James and Great St James in the US Virgin Islands have been listed by the Epstein estate for $125m (£95m).

During the years that Epstein owned the islands they earned nicknames such as “Island of Sin” and “Paedophile Island”, said The Telegraph. Prosecutors claimed that Epstein had brought girls as young as 11 to the islands by yacht and private helicopter, and that he and his associates “trafficked, raped, sexually assaulted and held girls captive”.

The New York Post said some victims of Epstein and his associates have described trying to swim off the shore in the shark-infested waters, almost drowning to escape the abuse they faced.

On the islands

Little St James, which covers more than 70 acres, was bought by Epstein in 1998. It features a main residential compound and four guest villas. It also has a helipad, a private dock, two pools, three private beaches, a gym and a tiki hut. A building with blue-and-white stripes and a gold domed ceiling has been dubbed “the temple”.

Among the high-profile figures to visit the islands are Prince Andrew and former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

Io Dodds at The Independent reported last year that Little St James has become “something of a morbid tourist attraction” since Epstein died in 2019. One local told the Daily Mirror that “despite it looking like paradise on earth, any connection to a man like Epstein is bad. Everyone here just wants to forget about him and what he’s accused of.”

Potential buyers

The Wall Street Journal said proceeds of the sale will go towards resolving the estate’s outstanding lawsuits and towards the regular costs of the estate’s operations.

But, in December, the New York Post revealed that Epstein’s New Mexico ranch was still on the market, five months after it was put on sale. The property, where Epstein also allegedly trafficked several women, was “having a difficult time finding a buyer”, said the paper. According to the Daily Mail it has still not sold.

A former Goldman Sachs executive bought Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion, knocked down to $51m from the original $88m asking price, while the developer Todd Michael Glaser bought his Palm Beach property for an unknown sum and demolished it last April.

“By contrast, Little St James – which Epstein liked to call ‘Little St Jeff’ – appears to have changed little since the days when Epstein made it his primary residence, sheltered from the intruding eyes and lenses of governments and journalists,” wrote Dodds for The Independent.

“Ghoulish as it may seem,” Dodds adds, both islands “have attracted interest from rich buyers”, but it has taken until now to resolve a civil case filed by the US Virgin Islands government trying to seize the land.

Two of Jeffrey Epstein's private islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands are going up for sale for $125 million, The Wall Street Journal reports, per listing agents.

The islands were a "key piece" of Epstein's "substantial international property portfolio," which also comprised his "storied New York townhouse, a Paris apartment, a Palm Beach mansion, and a New Mexico ranch," the Journal writes.

Great St. James, the larger of the pair of tropical properties, is located close to St. Thomas and is "largely untouched," the Journal notes. Little St. James, however, the smaller, 70-acre island, includes "a helipad, a private dock, a gas station, two pools, a main residential compound, four guest villas, three private beaches, a gym and a tiki hut," reports the Journal, per marketing materials.

According to a lawyer for the Epstein estate, money from the sale of both Great and Little St. James will go toward outstanding lawsuits and regular estate operation costs. Proceeds will also be subject to "tax authorities, creditors, and other claimants." Prosecutors for the Virgin Islands had in 2020 alleged Epstein brought girls to the private properties and sexually assaulted them.

The discredited businessman was found dead in custody in 2019, following an apparent suicide.

1. Boris Johnson claims the UK is rooting out dirty Russian money. That’s ludicrous

Oliver Bullough in The Guardian

On the need for enforcement

“We were warned about Vladimir Putin – about his intentions, his nature, his mindset – and, because it was profitable for us, we ignored those warnings and welcomed his friends and their money,” says Oliver Bullough in The Guardian. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee wrote two years ago that our investigative agencies are “underfunded, our economy is awash with dirty money, and oligarchs have bought influence at the very top of our society”. But “instead of learning from the report and implementing its proposals” Boris Johnson “delayed its publication until after the general election and then, when further delay became impossible, dismissed those who took its sober analysis seriously as ‘Islingtonian remainers’ seeking to delegitimise Brexit”. The prime minister’s “ludicrous claim” to the Commons that no government could “conceivably be doing more to root out corrupt Russian money” is an “inversion of reality”. Johnson must “fund our enforcement agencies as generously as oligarchs fund their lawyers”, he adds. And his colleagues must “step up and force him into action”.

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2. Vladimir Putin may just have made the error that ends his bloody rule

Con Coughlin in The Telegraph

On a reckless enterprise

“If Vladimir Putin believes that he can achieve a lasting victory in Ukraine, he need only look at the Kremlin’s disastrous involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s,” writes Con Coughlin in The Telegraph. The Soviet Union “came to regret ever having set foot in that benighted country”. Similarly, the Ukraine invasion could trigger a “long and costly conflict” that “could ultimately spell the end of Putin’s autocratic rule if the Russian people suddenly find themselves having to cope with the daily ritual of their young men being returned home in coffins”. Many Russians, including prominent businessmen with interests in the West, will be “appalled by their leader’s conduct, especially as they run the risk of being caught up in the wide-ranging sanctions that will be applied to Russian interests”. “Even if Putin achieves short-term military gains in his attempts to seize control of Ukraine,” he adds, “in the long term it could well be the Russian leader who ends up being the ultimate victim of his reckless Ukrainian enterprise.”

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3. Onstage at CPAC, Ron DeSantis just turned into Trump’s worst nightmare

Holly Baxter in The Independent

On cerebral Trumpism

“He’s 30 years younger, politically similar, and a little more restrained,” writes Holly Baxter in The Independent of Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. So “why wouldn’t the Hydra-head of Trump’s base be turned” by him? DeSantis yesterday gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that saw him turn into the former president’s main rival for the Republican ticket. He offers “more cerebral-sounding Trumpism” and is “energetic but calm onstage, talking about how ‘we reject the biomedical security state’ rather than ranting on about how UV light can probably cure Covid”. He also “buys heavily into the American conservative belief that everywhere outside of the US is a communist hellhole replete with forced labor camps” and “says the same things as the ageing grandfather in the corner”, she says. But he says them in a “folksy, I-got-your-back kind of way, and not in a way that makes some people wonder if Gramps might be losing his mind”. There is “no denying that he’s one of the most statesmanlike speakers on the CPAC schedule”, she adds. And “he might have just turned from Trump’s greatest protégé into Trump’s worst nightmare”.

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4. We cannot back down on banning trade in fur and foie gras

Tracey Crouch in The Times

On unethical products

“As a long-term advocate of better protection for animals”, Tracey Crouch says she feels “compelled to challenge any suggestion that political action to ban the indefensible trade in products of animal cruelty” is a “‘woke’ distraction, or somehow at odds with ‘Tory values’”. Writing in The Times, the Conservative MP said that over the past ten years, “this government has delivered enormous progress on animal welfare and has a record to be proud of”, including tougher sentences for animal cruelty offences and a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses. But it is “not enough simply to legislate against cruel and environmentally damaging practices in our own backyard”. The government should “also make clear to our trading partners that we will not provide markets for the unethical products from such industries”. Crouch was “disappointed to learn that the government may be set to abandon plans to introduce bans on the import and sale of animal fur and foie gras”. She “and other like-minded Conservatives can’t be expected to turn a blind eye to the huge public demand for action on fur and foie gras when the relevant legislation is introduced”.

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5. I used to love my name, before Jeffrey ruined it

Angela Epstein in The Jewish Chronicle

On a toxic title

Angela Epstein was 15 when she discovered the Beatles. She found the discovery exciting and “perhaps most thrilling of all was discovering that I shared a surname with the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. Now I had a real connection to the band. It may have been as flimsy as star dust but who cared? Not me.” Writing in The Jewish Chronicle, she explains that the name Epstein is one of the oldest Ashkenazi Jewish family names that is “thought to have derived from the German town of Eppstein, in Hesse”. But on Urban Dictionary, Epstein is defined as “a perverted billionaire **** head who used his money to get away with ****** young girls”. This is “what happens when a surname of which you have been so proud suddenly turns toxic”. She complains that when she’s “on television or radio myself” and the “evergreen, ever-gangrous story” of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse surfaces, “I have to rather pathetically splutter that he and I are in no way related”. She hopes that “in time, my surname will fade from its association with the warped American financier who killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges and whose actions damaged the lives of so many”.

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The former boss of a French model agency accused of rape and under investigation on suspicion of supplying underage girls for abuse by the late Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in prison in Paris.

The body of Jean-Luc Brunel was “found hanging in his cell in the early hours of Saturday”, The Guardian reported. His death has been confirmed by the French prosecutor’s office, which said “an inquiry had been opened into the exact cause of death, but early indications pointed to suicide”.

Brunel, 75, was arrested in December 2020 while attempting to board a flight from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Dakar in Senegal. He was first “put under investigation on allegations of the alleged rape of a minor and sexual harassment”, the paper said, before being questioned “on suspicion of the human trafficking of underage girls”.

‘Le Fantôme’

Born in 1946 in Paris, Brunel began his career as a modelling scout for Karin Models in the French capital. He later became head of the agency, before founding Next Management Corporation alongside his brother Arnaud in 1988.

In 1989, the Brunel brothers and Faith Kates formed the global modelling agency Next Management Company. In April 1996 Brunel split off from Next Management Company, resulting in Next Management Company suing the Brunel brothers later that year.

Brunel, who was nicknamed Le Fantôme (the phantom), met Ghislaine Maxwell in the 1980s and was introduced to Epstein. According to the Daily Beast, the billionaire provided him with one million dollars to fund the launch of the modelling agency MC2.

Prior to his arrest two years ago, “several top models had come forward to accuse [Brunel] of sexual assault and rape”, The Guardian reported. “French police had reportedly interviewed hundreds of potential witnesses” in connection with the alleged crimes.

“Brunel had denied any wrongdoing or any involvement in illegal activities”, but had “disappeared from public life shortly after Epstein’s death in August 2019”.

He was “alleged to be a central figure in Epstein’s sex abuse ring”, The Times said, with allegations suggesting that he used MC2 “to recruit girls for sexual abuse, steering them to orgies at his homes in Florida and New York”.

A former bookkeeper at the agency told the Daily Beast that the agency “arranged visas for girls travelling to the US from Eastern Europe, adding “that MC2 girls became frequent guests on Epstein’s private jets”.

Described by the Daily Mail as Epstein’s “pimp”, Brunel had become “the target of a wider investigation” looking into “Epstein’s associates in France”.

Echoes of Epstein

Brunel’s death appears to have been in similar circumstances to Epstein’s suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in August 2019. Brunel was being held in Paris’s Santé prison at the time of his death.

He had been released on bail last November but had been ordered to return to prison after a few days to await trial. Following his death, his legal team said in a statement that “his distress was that of a man of 75 years old caught up in a media-legal system that we should be questioning”.

“Jean-Luc Brunel never stopped claiming his innocence and had made many efforts to prove it. His decision [to end his life] was not driven by guilt but by a deep sense of injustice.”

According to The Sun, he was able to take his own life “despite six prison patrols who were supposed to be looking after vulnerable inmates”. However, he ”was not on suicide watch at the time and did not have any cameras in his cell”.

In a death that “echoes that of Epstein”, Brunel reportedly “found a time window between the patrols and managed to hang himself – escaping justice following accusations of trafficking and rape”, the paper added.

The Daily Mail said that his death in prison will “fuel conspiracy theories around the Epstein affair” given that “video cameras at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center were not running at the time Epstein died in 2019”.

Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein who agreed to a multimillion-pound out-of-court settlement with Prince Andrew last week, stated in a 2015 affidavit that Epstein boasted of sleeping “with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls”.

She responded to the news of his death in a statement that said: “The suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel, who abused me and countless girls and women, ends another chapter. I am disappointed that I was not able to face him in a final trial.”

Ian Maxwell, whose sister Ghislaine is being held in isolation at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, told the New York Post: “It’s really shocking. Another death by hanging in a high-security prison. My reaction is one of total shock and bewilderment.”

He continued that he “fears for her safety” following Brunel’s apparent suicide, warning: “Despite the psychiatrist advising to the contrary, she was deemed a suicide risk and they are continuing to wake her up every 15 minutes in the night.

“It’s a complete violation of prisoner rights and human rights.”

Former French modeling agent and Jeffrey Epstein associate Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead in his Paris jail cell during the night, a spokesman for the city's prosecutor said Saturday.

According to The New York Times, Brunel, 75, had been charged with raping minors over the age of 15 (France's age of consent) and with sexual harassment. He was also "suspected of scouting young women" for Epstein's sex trafficking ring.

The prosecutor said Brunel was found hanging and that his death appeared to be a suicide.

Epstein died in prison in 2019 — also by hanging and, investigators concluded, by suicide — but his legacy of abuse continues to unfold.

On Tuesday, Britain's Prince Andrew reached a settlement with Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sex with Andrew and others while she was a minor. Andrew, who has been stripped of his royal titles and duties by Queen Elizabeth II, made no admission of guilt and agreed to donate an undisclosed sum to Giuffre's charity supporting victims' rights.

Per the Times, Giuffre's court filings said Brunel would procure girls as young as 12 for Epstein by offering them modeling jobs and that Brunel personally abused her on multiple occasions.

In December, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of procuring underage girls for Epstein to abuse. She was convicted on five sex trafficking charges, each of which carries a prison term of between five and 40 years.

The U.K.'s Prince Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth II, has settled a lawsuit concerning sexual assault claims brought against him by Virginia Giuffre, Bloomberg reports.

Giuffre had accused the prince of "raping her when she was a teenage victim of Andrew's friend, the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein," The New York Times writes. Andrew has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The amount upon which the two parties settled is confidential, but the British royal will also make a "substantial donation" to Giuffre's charity supporting victim's rights, per a joint statement attached to the court filing.

"Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre's character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks," read the statement, which also commends Giuffre for her "bravery," a characterization that "contrasts sharply" with the way Andrew's lawyers described her previously, notes the Times.

The settlement arrives just weeks before Andrew was to sit for a deposition, scheduled for March 10.

In January, after a judge allowed the case against him to proceed, the prince was stripped of his military titles and royal charities and was to no longer go by "His Royal Highness" or take on any public duties.

Prince Andrew is set to give evidence under oath in London on March 10, BBC reported Saturday.

The Duke of York is being sued in a United States district court by Virginia Giuffre, who accuses Andrew of sexually abusing her. Giuffre alleges that Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex criminal who died in prison in 2019, trafficked her and forced her to have sex with Andrew while she was still a minor. Andrew has denied all allegations.

The prince's lawyers argued last month that, under the terms of a recently unsealed 2009 settlement between Giuffre and Epstein, the lawsuit against Andrew ought to be dismissed. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan disagreed and allowed the case to move forward.

According to The Guardian, "Andrew's deposition will be conducted by Giuffre's lawyers, David Boies and Sigrid McCawley, and is expected to last two days."

Queen Elizabeth II stripped Andrew, her second son, of his military titles and royal patronages in January after he failed to get the lawsuit dismissed.

The “wrongful” conduct of Virginia Roberts Giuffre will be central to Prince Andrew’s defence against the sexual abuse lawsuit that she has brought against him, according to court papers filed yesterday by his lawyers.

In an 11-page letter to the New York Judge presiding over the case, Prince Andrew’s team cited the so-called “doctrine of unclean hands” – an “allegation that Giuffre has acted unethically related to the accusations”, said The Guardian.

Arguing that she has no right to benefit from a civil case, the lawyers wrote that “Giuffre’s alleged causes of action are barred in whole or in part by her own wrongful conduct”.

What else did the lawyers say?

The duke of York’s defence team also “reiterated their unsuccessful claim” that a 2009 settlement between Giuffre and Epstein meant that the royal was protected from legal action, said The Guardian. And they repeated their argument that Giuffre had waited too long after the alleged abuse occurred to bring a complaint, “barring her from suing”, the newspaper added.

The legal documents also laid out demands from Andrew for a “trial by jury on all causes of action asserted in the complaint”. The trial requested in the “defiant” letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan is “likely to take place in New York in September or October”, said The Independent.

Giuffre is accusing Andrew of “sexual assault and battery”. She claims that she was trafficked by late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and forced to have sex with the duke when she was 17 – allegations that Andew has repeatedly denied.

However, in the newly filed court documents, Andrew’s lawyers said that he “lacks sufficient information to admit or deny” Giuffre’s prior allegations that Epstein used his wealth and connections “to create a web of transcontinental sex trafficking that served himself, his coconspirators, and some of the most powerful people in the world”.

Royal Family’s response

With just days until the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations officially kick off, Buckingham Palace will be regarding Andrew’s legal defence with “suppressed horror”, said the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell.

Andrew’s lawyers “give the impression that they will go in hard, particularly over this use of doctrine of unclean hands”. Witchell told Radio 4’s Today programme. “They will attempt to assert that Virginia Giuffre’s conduct was sufficiently wrong in itself that she has forfeited the right to benefit in any way from this situation.”

How this strategy of Andrew appearing to “blame” Guiffre would “play in front of a New York jury” remained to be seen, Witchell added. But the strategy could be part of a “softening up process”, in the hope that Giuffre and her legal team would be “more inclined perhaps to consider an out-of-court settlement”.

Giuffre’s lawyers have “hit back” at the inclusion of the “doctrine of unclean hands” and the apparent blaming of her for the abuse she allegedly suffered as a teenager, said The Independent.

In a statement to the newspaper, David Boies, a member of Giuffre’s legal team, said: “Prince Andrew’s answer continues his approach of denying any knowledge or information concerning the claims against him, and purporting to blame the victim of the abuse for somehow bringing it on herself.

“We look forward to confronting Prince Andrew with his denials and attempts to blame Ms Giuffre for her own abuse at his deposition and at trial.”

Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre have reached an out-of-court settlement in the civil sexual abuse claim filed in the US.

According to a letter submitted to the US District Court, written jointly by Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies and the Duke of York’s legal representatives, the two parties have “reached a settlement in principle”.

The out-of-court deal will mean Prince Andrew will not face a public trial over allegations that he sexually abused Giuffre when she was a teenager. The Duke of York has always strenuously denied the allegations.

Instead, he will make a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”, according to the letter. The prince intends to demonstrate his regret for his association with Jeffrey Epstein by supporting the “fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims”.

What could he have faced?

The Duke of York was facing a civil trial in the US for sexual assault allegations after failing to have the lawsuit thrown out of court in mid-January.

His lawyers had called for the dismissal of the case, brought by Giuffre, citing a deal that she signed with convicted paedophile Epstein in 2009. But a New York judge rejected the motion to have the case thrown out “in all respects”.

That meant that Prince Andrew was facing “the prospect of giving evidence in a high-profile trial” that would have required him to divulge “aspects of his personal life in open court”, reported The Guardian.

In a settlement with Epstein, Giuffre was paid $500,000 (£370,000) to end her claims against the billionaire property tycoon and anyone connected to him who could be described as a “potential defendant” – including royalty.

Prince Andrew’s lawyers had tried to argue that he was a “potential defendant” under the terms of the agreement and that therefore the case brought against him by Guiffre should be dismissed. Guiffre’s lawyers argued that only the parties of the settlement agreement could benefit from it, and not a "third party”.

In his decision, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said that it was far from clear whether Prince Andrew was covered by the agreement, describing it as “ambiguous”.

As The Times explained, the deal settled a complaint which alleged that Epstein “committed violations of federal laws, including sex trafficking”. But Judge Kaplan wrote in his judgment that “it nowhere alleges that this defendant [Prince Andrew] committed any”.

Privacy protected

Judge Kaplan’s decision left Prince Andrew facing “big decisions”, said the BBC’s royal correspondent, Sean Coughlan. “Trying to block the case using the deal between the dead paedophile Epstein and Giuffre was already heavy with reputational risks.”

Any expert witnesses for the trial would have had to have been disclosed by 13 May, according to The Guardian, while rebuttal witnesses would have been disclosed a month later.

Discovery – defined as “the formal process of exchanging information between the parties about the witnesses and evidence they’ll present at trial” – would have gone on until 14 July, and a joint pre-trial proposal would have been filed by 28 July.

But Mitchell Garabedian, an experienced lawyer in sexual abuse cases, explained to The Guardian that those deadlines were only ever “a guideline”.

If the civil case against Prince Andrew had proceeded, he would have faced the prospect of being “cross-examined on camera by one of America’s most feared trial lawyers”, said The Times. Giuffre’s lawyer, Boies, led the cross-examination of Ghislaine Maxwell which resulted in perjury charges against her.

He would have been given “broad leeway to question Andrew on the allegations and on conversations he may have had with the Queen”, the paper added.

Other members of the Royal Family could also have faced questioning, including Sarah, Duchess of York, and their daughter Princess Beatrice.

The out-of-court settlement means that Prince Andrew has avoided the possibility of a “sensational” trial, The Guardian said. But a settlement could have cost “millions”. The question now, tweeted the paper’s media editor Jim Waterson, is exactly “who paid” the donation.

There had been suggestions that Giuffre would “want her day in court”, The Guardian reported. But that could have caused “monumental reputational damage” to the monarchy in the year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

Prince Andrew will have to testify under oath after his attempt to dismiss a sexual abuse lawsuit against him failed Tuesday, The Telegraph reports.

After a hearing that lasted an hour and 15 minutes, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who serves on U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled that plaintiff Virginia Giuffre's civil suit against the duke of York could proceed.

Giuffre alleges that Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex criminal who died in prison in 2019, trafficked her and forced her to have sex with Andrew while she was still a minor.

Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty last month of procuring underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.

Andrew's lawyer, Andrew Brettler, argued last week that, under the terms of a recently unsealed 2009 settlement agreement between Giuffre and Epstein, the case ought to be dismissed. The settlement stipulated that Giuffre drop her case against Epstein and not pursue legal action against "any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant." In return, Giuffre was paid $500,000.

Kaplan was skeptical of Brettler's arguments at the time, and his Wednesday ruling came as no surprise.

According to Kaplan's ruling, the agreement "cannot be said to demonstrate, clearly and unambiguously, the parties intended the instrument 'directly,' 'primarily,' or 'substantially,' to benefit Prince Andrew," and therefore the case must be allowed to move forward.

The Telegraph noted this was Andrew's final attempt to have the case dismissed. Now, his only chance to avoid trial this fall is to request a summary judgment. Otherwise, he will have to testify under oath.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers have called for a retrial after a second juror revealed that they were sexually abused as a child and spoke of the experience during deliberations.

Days after a first juror said that his story of childhood sexual abuse helped to quell jury room doubts over why accusers waited years before coming forward, a second juror told The New York Times (NYT) that they also disclosed the abuse they suffered as a child.

A former federal prosecutor told The Times that the situation is “an absolute train wreck”, adding: “I believe that it’s likely going to result in a mistrial.” Here is what we know.

What have the jurors said?

The second unnamed juror told the NYT that they had been sexually abused as a child and that they “discussed the experience during deliberations” which “appeared to help shape the jury’s discussions”.

The news came days after another juror, identified only by his first and middle names as Scotty David, gave a series of media interviews in which he said he had helped sway the deliberations by recounting his own trauma as a result of childhood sexual abuse.

“I know what happened when I was sexually abused. I remember the colour of the carpet, the walls. Some of it can be replayed like a video,” he told the jury, according to The Independent.

“I can’t remember all the details, there are some things that run together. When I shared that, they were able to sort of come around on, they were able to come around on the memory aspect of the sexual abuse,” he added, said the BBC.

What will happen now?

Maxwell’s lawyers have indicated that they plan to appeal for a mistrial, stating in two letters to the court that their client would seek a new trial and that the judge “can and should order” one without holding a hearing.

They said that Maxwell planned to make her request under a federal rule that grants a judge the power to order a new trial when the “interest of justice so requires”.

Judge Alison Nathan has agreed to hear Maxwell’s motion for a new trial, setting a deadline of 19 January for the defence to file a motion to “vacate the sex-trafficking conviction”, The Telegraph said.

Much will now hang on whether the jurors “honestly” identified themselves as survivors of sexual abuse on a jury questionnaire, The Times said.

According to The Telegraph, Scotty David incorrectly told the court he had not been a victim of sexual assault. A source with knowledge of the case told the paper that the juror had answered “no” to the question of whether they had ever been a victim of such a crime.

Scotty David has retained attorney Todd Spodek after he was advised by the US government to seek legal representation.

Arlo Devlin-Brown, a former federal prosecutor, told the NYT that “generally there is nothing wrong with jurors bringing their personal experiences into deliberations”.

However, he added that “dishonesty during the selection process goes to the very integrity of the proceedings and credible allegations of such are taken very seriously”.

Maxwell was convicted on five charges relating to the trafficking and transportation of teenagers who were sexually abused by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The jury deliberated for more than 40 hours. A date for her sentencing has not yet been set but she faces up to 65 years in prison.

Once seen as Britain’s “playboy” prince and frequently touted as the Queen’s favourite son, Prince Andrew’s association with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has destroyed his standing in the eyes of the British public and tarnished the reputation of the Royal Family across the globe.

The playboy prince

In his youth he was considered “one of the world’s most eligible bachelors”, earning himself the tabloid nickname “Randy Andy” after being linked to a “string of beautiful women”, said the London Evening Standard. This included American actress Koo Stark, a relationship which came to an “abrupt end” in 1980 when it was revealed she had starred in a “racy” movie ten years earlier, said the Daily Mail.

But in his later years, Prince Andrew’s reputation in the British press as a Lothario royal would sour as he was linked to controversial foreign figures and criticised for his globe-trotting habits – in particular, helicopter trips to play golf – which would earn him the moniker “Air Miles Andy”, a nickname that stuck for decades.

At the time of his birth, 19 February 1960, Andrew was the “first child born to a reigning British monarch (male or female) since 1857”, according to Britannica, as heir to the throne Prince Charles was born when the Queen was still Princess Elizabeth. For the first 22 years of his life he was second in line to the throne, behind Charles, and ahead of his older sister Princess Anne, until the birth of his nephew Prince William in 1982.

The birth of subsequent generations means he is now only ninth in the order of succession, following the latest arrivals: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children, Archie and Lilibet.

Active duty during the Falklands War

After being educated at Gordonstoun School in Scotland, as his father Prince Philip and his brother Charles had been, Andrew entered Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, in 1979 to train as a naval officer and then underwent pilot training in fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

At 22 he saw active service in the Royal Navy as a Sea King helicopter pilot on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible. It was a role that “put him in the front line during the early stages of the conflict” when the Argentinian air force began a campaign targeting Royal Navy warships carrying Sear Harrier jump-jets and Sea Kings, said The Times.

“There is little doubt that his life was in constant danger throughout the ten-week campaign,” said the newspaper, with one of his regular roles to act as a decoy to draw away incoming Exocet missiles from HMS Invincible by confusing their guidance system.

On his return he was “greeted by the Queen as his ship pulled into the harbour”, said The Mirror. “He came back a hero and was very much the golden boy of the royal family,” royal expert Katie Nicholl told the newspaper.

Marriage to Sarah Ferguson

On 23 July 1986 Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson, popularly known as “Fergie”, in a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey. They received the title of Duke and Duchess of York on the same day.

But the relationship is “believed to have begun unravelling soon after they were married”, as Prince Andrew’s naval career meant he was away for long periods, and “as a result, the couple reportedly only saw each other for around 40 days per year”, said The Independent.

The couple separated in March 1992 and divorced in May 1996. Soon after the separation Ferguson became embroiled in a scandal that would estrange her from the Royal Family for several years. Photographs of her and John Bryan, an American business manager, were published in the Daily Mirror which showed Bryan “kissing the duchess’s toes as she sunbathed topless”.

But the pair have always remained close, with friends of the one-time couple believing remarriage could “be on the cards”, said Vanity Fair. Talks of remarriage have reportedly “reignited” since the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, as this was considered impossible while the Duke was alive due to a reported “long-term rift” between him and his former daughter-in-law.

Friendship with Jeffrey Epstein

The prince’s friendships have long been a point of controversy, with his questionable associations ranging from “lunching at Buckingham Palace with a ‘notorious’ member of the former Tunisian regime, to taking a holiday with a Libyan gun smuggler”, said the BBC in 2011.

But it has been Andrew’s friendship with Epstein that has proved the most damaging to his reputation, and that of the Royal Family.

There was “huge controversy” after he was photographed meeting the disgraced financier in New York’s Central Park in December 2010, after the tycoon had served an 18-month prison sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution, said the broadcaster.

And in 2015, in US court documents, he was accused of having sex with Virginia Giuffre at three of Epstein’s properties when she was 17 years old and a minor under US law. Prince Andrew has always denied the allegations.

His associations with Epstein hit the headlines once again in 2019 when the disgraced tycoon killed himself in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.

A Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis was intended to draw a line under Prince Andrew’s associations with Epstein and the allegations brought against him by Giuffre.

During the interview, the duke denied he slept with Giuffre, saying an encounter alleged to have taken place in 2001 could not have taken place because he was at a Pizza Express in Woking, Surrey, with his daughter Princess Beatrice.

He also said Giuffre’s claim that he was sweaty at a nightclub could not be true because an “overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands war” had left him unable to sweat.

The interview ultimately led to Prince Andrew stepping back from Royal duties and public life.

Two years on, a New York judge is deciding whether to allow Giuffre to pursue her civil case. Judge Lewis Kaplan has said he will deliver his decision “pretty soon”, leaving Andrew’s hopes of having the case thrown out of court hanging in the balance, said the i news site.

Should Kaplan dismiss the case, Andrew “will have won and will begin the long path to rebuilding his reputation”, added the website.

But if he allows the case to go forward, Andrew “could face damaging testimony”, said The New York Times, and that “would plunge the House of Windsor back into scandal at the very moment it hopes to use the Platinum Jubilee to remind Britons of the queen’s extraordinary longevity and largely blemish-free record of service”.

Lawyers for Prince Andrew have asked a U.S. court to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's sexual harassment lawsuit, claiming that the suit violates a recently unsealed 2009 settlement between Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein, BBC reports.

Giuffre alleges that Epstein, a convicted sex criminal who died in prison in 2019, trafficked her and forced her to have sex with Andrew while she was still a minor.

Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty last month of procuring underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.

According to the terms of the settlement, which the court unsealed Monday, Giuffre dropped her lawsuit against Epstein in exchange for $500,000. The settlement also stipulated that Giuffre not pursue legal action against "any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant."

The prince's lawyers argue that Andrew ought to be considered one of those "potential defendant[s]."

Giuffre attorney David Boies disagrees, CNN reported. Bois said the prince "could not have been a 'potential defendant' in the settled case against Jeffrey Epstein both because he was not subject to jurisdiction in Florida and because the Florida case involved federal claims to which he was not a part."

During oral arguments Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan appeared to side with Boies, offering unsympathetic responses to the arguments presented on Andrew's behalf by his lawyer Andrew Brettle, The Associated Press reports.

If Giuffre's case is allowed to proceed and the parties fail to reach a settlement, Andrew could face trial in late 2022.

Prince Andrew’s legal team is calling on a US judge to throw out the sexual assault civil lawsuit against the royal following the disclosure of a settlement between his accuser and the late Jeffrey Epstein.

The legal document was released by a New York court ahead of what the BBC described as a “critical hearing” today in the case brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against the duke of York, the BBC said.

Under the terms of the 2009 deal, Guiffre was paid $500,000 (£371,000) to end her claims against billionaire paedophile Epstein and anyone connected to him who could be described as a “potential defendant”.

Why is the document important?

The 12-page document details how Giuffre agreed to “release, acquit, satisfy and forever discharge” Epstein and “any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant” from any US legal action, including damages claims dating “from the beginning of the world”.

Giuffre is now suing Prince Andrew for alleged sexual assaults that she claims took place when she was a minor under US law. She alleges that she was repeatedly forced to have sex with him when she was 17 after being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Andrew has repeatedly denied the claims.

How the settlement document is interpreted will form a “central plank” of the legal argument from the two sides in the case, said the BBC. Andrew’s lawyers have argued that although he is not mentioned by name in the agreement, he is covered by the legal document.

Giuffre alleged in her original claim against Epstein, filed in Florida in 2008, that she was “required to be sexually exploited” by his “adult male peers, including royalty”. According to Andrew’s team, “that means the duke was a potential defendant and that he was included in the 2009 agreement”, said The Times.

But Giuffre’s team have insisted that the document is “irrelevant” to her claim against the duke. “The release does not mention Prince Andrew. He did not even know about it,” said David Boies, a lawyer for Giuffre, in a statement. “The reason we sought to have the release made public was to refute the claims being made about it by Prince Andrew’s PR campaign.”

In a previous court filing, her lawyers said that the 2009 deal was “outside the four corners” of her action against Andrew because it does not specifically cover her allegations against him.

Will the case be dismissed?

Lisa Bloom, a lawyer for other alleged victims of Epstein, told the BBC that the settlement as “incomprehensibly vague” and “one of the most bizarre” she had ever seen.

“We want contracts to clearly specify who is released from a lawsuit and who is not,” said Bloom, who predicted that US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over the civil case, would not release Andrew from the lawsuit following a video teleconference with the royal’s lawyers today.

But journalist and lawyer Lucia Osborne-Crowley suggested that the “very broad” language used in the settlement could “spell success” for the prince.

“It is very possible that the settlement agreement between Virginia Roberts and Jeffrey Epstein protects Prince Andrew,” Osborne-Crowley told The Independent. Because the settlement refers to “any third party that could be considered a ‘potential defendant’ in the Epstein lawsuit”, Andew could “be ‘forever’ shielded from any and all claims” brought by Roberts, Osborne-Crowley continued.

The deal “also specifically says that all potential defendants are protected from all lawsuits regardless of whether they are brought in federal or state court”. And “American law treats settlement agreements in civil lawsuits no differently to any other private contract”.

“So if the judge rules that Prince Andrew falls into the category of a ‘potential defendant’, it’s likely that the deal will protect him,” Osborne-Crowley concluded.