Connections Between Andrew's Epstein Allegations and Fergie's Debts

29:05The wide interpretation being that, you know, it's a kind of warning shot across the bowels that it's not impossible that they will take a decision at some point to charge and prosecute Andrew. Now, can you really see that happening? Do you think that we will actually finally get to see Andrew get his day in court? Well, I mean, I hope so. I mean, I think certainly Di Davis has been, you know, saying this is a strong case for a long time. I mean, the evidence is pretty overwhelming now from the leaks. I'm told by my sources that they are taking it seriously. They have to. I mean, it's been seen as a whitewash up till now.

29:40When I put in FOIs, they wouldn't even tell me whether they'd investigated Andrew or not. And they just want to get their ducks in a row to make sure that they get it right because everyone is looking at them. So I do hope these words are going to be followed up with action. I mean, the suspicion is that they will say, I'm sorry, we haven't got a strong enough case. But if they come after Mandelson and if Mandelson is convicted, I think there's as much, if not more, evidence against Andrew than there is against Mandelson. So they're in a difficult position. Well, this is it. This is it. What does it say?

30:14Yeah. Where does it leave the monarchy if Mandelson gets prosecuted and Andrew doesn't? I mean, it was absolutely going to look like a stitcher. Well, I keep saying what's going to happen is that Andrew will be charged. But by that stage, he will have done a King I Carlos and disappeared to the Middle East somewhere without an extradition treaty. And the last thing the royal family want is a trial with all the stuff aired in public who knew what when. And that will be the neat solution. But if the royal family is seen to have bettered that escape and basically converting the court of justice, they will be in trouble.

30:50And how much trouble? Just to pause you there, how much trouble will they be? I mean, we've been starting to see more and more people talking in terms of whether this will destroy. Yeah, yeah, no, I think the monarchy is at a point where unless it basically cleans out the stables and has to take the hit, may have to accept that certain very senior royals knew about things and covered them up or turned a blind eye. then and to the extent that the king may have to stand down i think that they're in real trouble i don't think william's compromised in any way by this the these revelations i think charles is and i think we may be getting to the point of of charles stepping down for health reasons wow and when you say stepping down for health reasons you mean that's as in you know that's the official narrative but the real reason will be yes i mean i know for example uh a newspaper because the sun ran a story the other day saying that the the hush money part of it had come from charles now that doesn't mean that he knew entirely what he was paying for uh and even if he hadn't contributed he may have known what he was paying for but the palace then put out a denial a rather weak denial now i've checked with my source which is pretty good says charles did contribute money to the settlement.

32:10I know from another paper, from one of the mainstream papers, that they have also confirmed that, but they are not going public with that story because they feel it would be too dangerous for the monarchy. Wow, okay, that is fascinating. Now, I want to just go through some of the details of misconduct in a public office because this is a, it's an offence that, you know, it's hundreds of years old. It was in the pre-modern era that this offence came to be, which means it's not contained in any act of parliament it doesn't have the kind of formalized definition and defenses that you would expect in a piece of modern legislation and because it dates be part of britain's i think unwritten constitution and so the main body of kind of case law to bring to bear to understand the line that constitutes when an offense has been committed comes from court of appeal hearings really fairly recently including in relation to journalists who were prosecuted on something called Operation Elverton, journalists who worked at Rupert Murdoch, basically at The Sun or the News of the World.

33:11And so I actually reported on some of those trials. And so I remember, I distinctly remember the exact wording that was put before the jury, which is that an offence is committed if a public official willfully misconducts themselves without reasonable excuse in a manner that represents a serious breach of the trust placed in that public official by the public. So there's four component parts to that, all of which have their own relevance to this scenario. So one is willful misconduct means it has to be that the person has to know that what they're doing is wrong. And that is where I think the Sarah Ferguson debt stuff really becomes so important, because Andrew could hypothetically try to argue, well, I thought that passing on these investment opportunities was in Britain's national interest.

33:57I thought Epstein was this great guy and he was going to come in and solve all of these problems. So, you know, I thought I was doing the right thing and it was what everybody wanted me to do. But if the police were able to establish a quid pro quo relationship where Andrew was trying to get Fergie's debts paid off, that blows up that potential defense because, you know, nobody can not know that getting your ex-wife's debts paid off in exchange for confidential information is wrong. Like that is very obvious. Well, I need to sort of check this, but my father was a judge and he was involved in a case with Patrick Gordon Walker's son, who inadvertently, as a civil servant, left documents somewhere where they were found.

34:40And actually, that wasn't willful. That was accidental. But he certainly went to prison because I remember his. Oh, wow. For misconduct in a public office. Something like that. I mean, certainly he certainly went to prison because I remember because his brother was my boss and it was all rather embarrassing. Wow yeah of course yes it would be it would be and so you've got um yeah so they have to willfully and then without reasonable excuse you know what excuse could Andrew possibly have had and then you know in a manner that would create a serious breach so very unequivocally you know if you've got documents about investment opportunities in post-war Helmand province where the British armed forces were operating at the time um that you know you've got that sounds pretty serious to me.

35:23And then this is the really fascinating bit is it's about the trust placed in the public official by the public. And part of the way that the CPS, the Crown Prosecution Service in Britain, got some of their prosecutions of journalists wrong is that they tried to put the cases based on what the managers thought. So let's take, for example, classic scenario would be a prison guard at a prison selling a story to a tabloid newspaper to say, you know, the conditions inside UK jails are too soft you know this high profile murderer has been sitting around playing computer games having a lovely time um and so the uh the cps would then wheel out the manager of the prison who would say oh yes now i thought this was terrible and it's against the code of conduct and what the court of appeal ruled was that actually it doesn't matter what the manager of the prison thinks um it's not about that it's about the public's trust and so what that also means in this context is that Charles kind of can't get Andrew off because it doesn't matter what the monarchy thinks and it doesn't necessarily actually matter that much what the department of the business department thought at the time.

36:30What matters is what the public think, is whether the public would find it outrageous that Andrew was sharing this material with a convicted paedophile that was marked, some of which was explicitly discussed and described as confidential in those very emails. Yes, no, I think you make a very strong case. But I mean, I've also offered, I've written to the National Crime Agency offering the material that wasn't in the book. For example, a five million dollar bribe in Kazakhstan in a suitcase with I've also got material about Andrew lobbying for passports for people, which, again, the Home Office refused to respond to when I raise these issues.

37:10So there is I think there's other things there as well. and it would be very easy with a series of if we could see all the correspondence my understanding is a lot of Andrew's papers have been destroyed in preparation for possible charges being leveled but there must be a lot of material around that might support some of the some of this stuff anyway but the leaks seem to me pretty pretty overwhelming in terms of making a case and I think as you've done joining the timescale um or fixing the timescale to it i think just really does emphasize that it was a quid pro quo yeah indeed and well listen andrew thank you so much for having me on it's been um wonderful to chat to you about this and you know any viewers listeners watching listening at home um entitled is a fantastic book andrew just put basically you know if you're somebody who's frustrated at the way that uh news organizations sometimes have to tiptoe around the Epstein story and get everything kind of, you know, rigorously legaled and take out loads of stuff like Andrew's book.

38:13You just put the kitchen sink in it and it was incredibly brave thing to do. But it's all there. And there's just so much granular detail about everything that Andrew and Fuggy were doing. So I can strongly recommend it to anybody who really wants to go deep into the Andrew aspects to this to this issue. Thank you. Now, as this whole story and scandal has expanded it obviously inevitably has started to draw more people in including palace staff palace aides one of which amanda thirsk is somebody i've mentioned a lot in my reporting now i should say we don't know what she would say about all of this stuff no doubt she's signed ndas and whatnot that would stop her from speaking if she was here right now i'm sure she might well want to come and say that you know she never knew andrew was forwarding these emails on to epstein and that's totally possible.

39:04But where I'm coming from here is that this needs to be investigated. It should be the police asking Amanda Thirsk what really happened. And that, I think, is really time now to see that step up. It's been too long that it's been the journalists asking these questions, questions that the police should be asking and answering. And on that note, I'm going to take a quick break, but please remember to rate and review The Royal Report on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your favourite shows. And of course, if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe. And when I'm back, a new royal biography gives for the first time Prince William's response to Harry's claim that he threw his brother into a dog bowl.

39:59Welcome back to the show. Now, Prince Harry's account of Prince William throwing him into a dog ball during an argument about Meghan was the first major line to leak before Spare's publication back in January 2023. Spare, of course, being Harry's memoir. Now, part of the reason it led the charge and was the first big story is because the book was leaked to the Guardian. And that just happened to be the line they picked out. But it became the biggest, probably in totality, the biggest thing to come out of Spare. apart from revelations about frostbite that I will not inflict on viewers a second time.

40:34But now, for the very first time, we have heard William's side of the story through a new royal biography, a book called William and Catherine by Russell Myers, the Mirror's royal editor. Now, Russell quotes a source who says basically that William is adamant that there was no physical violence. the source does also recognize that obviously it was a heated exchange it was actually an argument over whether Meghan was difficult to work for and how the staff felt about her which also got Harry very upset now here to talk through all of this and other revelations from the book from the serialization in fact in the Daily Mirror is Andrew Loney who has written his own royal book called Entitled, which was an absolute excoriating dive into the affairs of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Prince Andrew when it was released in August, and also Sarah Ferguson, Andrew's ex-wife.

41:32Now, Andrew, I would love to get your views on some of the royal soap opera, because we've had a new royal book out this past week by Russell Myers, who's the royal editor for The Mirror, and he's very close to the Kensington Palace team, to William and Kate's aides, to their friends, and he's got some fantastic contacts. And that has enabled him to shed some new light on some past royal dramas between William and Harry, largely about Meghan. And one of the things that really jumped off the page to me was he's actually got the first rebuttal we've seen of Harry's allegation that William threw him into a dog bowl.

42:09Now, you might remember this from Harry's book Spare. We knew, obviously, even before Spare came out that the royal rift went incredibly deep, that it at some points probably got quite toxic. We knew that William thought Meghan had bullied the staff, that Harry thought that that was outrageous, and Harry and Meghan's line was all about the neglect of the family to Meghan when she was being trashed by the media. But then when Harry's book came out, he had this story about William going round to his house. They had an argument about Meghan. William said Meghan was difficult to work for, and she'd alienated half the staff and all this stuff.

42:43And then Harry said he denied it all, had a go at his brother verbally, William lost his temper and physically manhandled Harry onto the floor, landing on the dog bowl with enough force that the dog bowl shattered and bits of dog bowl were like sticking into Harry's back. So we went into quite a lot of detail. It wasn't a kind of off-the-cuff, fleeting remark. And then in response to that, this book has now come out by Russell Myers called William and Catherine. It's out in America in March. published by Pegasus, and it says William is, it quotes the source saying, William is adamant that there was no physical violence.

43:21So I'm going to read you the exact quote in full, and I just want to know what you think about this, because it's a classic case of Royal PR, where Harry went on the record with his own words and put his kind of reputation on the line in doing so, and now the clapback comes from an anonymous source, which is Royal PR 101, but it kind of works. It is effective. It's an effective way to do it because it protects William because no one can definitively say that it came from William himself. But this is the quote from a source. It was a cheap shot from Harry to present to present such an argument.

43:54Tensions were running very high. And yes, there certainly were crosswords exchange exchange that on reflection were regrettable. But the prince is adamant there was no physical violence. it wasn't a peddling a tabloid narrative because you know that's what harry said is that william was peddling the tabloid narrative about duchess difficult so the source says it wasn't peddling a tabloid narrative to stick up for staff that were deeply unhappy to the point of walking away or having their mental health being affected yeah well i mean you know i never totally believed the story because it seemed to me william is quite a serious person but you know people can lose this temper, the famous Windsor temper.

44:33So, and I don't think anyone thought the worst of William for the way he behaved. So, but as you say, it's a very good way of responding to it, even if it's years later. I think the thing that caught my eye, and I haven't read the book, I intend to, is that the sources talking to Russell were saying that William really got the measure of Andrew, He wanted tougher action taken sooner. And that certainly backed up what I'd been hearing from my sources, which I suspect are very different to Russell's. Yeah, so that's in relation to this tension that we know about between the King and William over what to do about Andrew, the kind of the received wisdom which you're standing up and which Russell Myers is standing up to, is that Charles wanted to take a softer approach on Andrew and William has been the driving force behind kind of coming in and saying, no, no, no, we have to take this much more seriously than it's being taken and basically banish Andrew.

45:28Yes, and it's a line very much that Tom Sykes has been pushing too, who's got very good sources. And that just feels better. I mean, Charles is not a man who likes confrontation. He's talking about his brother. He doesn't perhaps realize the reputational damage that's been created in the way that William does. And I think he kind of tried to duck the issue. I mean, the fact that Fergie was allowed to come back within the fold, having been excluded, I think speaks to his sense of compassion and kindness, but perhaps not his ruthlessness. Yeah, indeed. And that, you know, that is something about Charles is that he can be very stubborn when he wants to.

46:03And if there's something that he wants, like Camilla becoming queen, he won't necessarily let go of it. And there's the loyalty, a huge loyalty to Charles, which can at times be admirable, but it can also kind of be his downfall. So, for example, Michael Fawcett, who I think he wound up having to resign probably at least, I think there were resignations from three different positions, but also the most recent one from the King's Foundation. He resigned twice from the same job within the same spell. Like he didn't actually come back after the first resignation. The Mandelson of the royal family.

46:34Yes, exactly. Yes, the Pete Mandelson of the royal family. And Michael Fawcett, he was the one who was caught up in this whole cash for honors situation where he had been offering a Saudi billionaire help securing a knighthood and citizenship in exchange for donations to Charles' charity. So, yeah, I mean, look, it's fascinating stuff. The king, there is a kindness to him, but he has also like a kind of naivety. So he has his own, you know, Epstein in a way, like not to the extent that obviously Andrew has been accused of sexually abusing Virginia Jeffery, which he denies. But, you know, Charles was friends with Jimmy Savile, who was probably Britain's worst child abuser.

47:15Epstein is perhaps America's worst child abuser than Jimmy Savile was Britain. Yeah, well, I think one of the... And Charles and Diana were both friends. Yeah, sorry to drop. I mean, one of the interesting things is Michael Wolff has talked about seeing pictures of Epstein with other members of the royal family. He didn't say who they are. And, I mean, if that's the case, then that is quite worrying because it's not just penetrating Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. You know, we see with so many other characters associated with Andrew, the Queen, for example, entertaining David Rowland to tea or at Ascot.

47:48and you know if Epstein got his wish which was to sort of deal with other members of the royal family I mean there's a quote I have in my book of Roland saying that he acts for for King Charles or Prince Charles then as well as Andrew then that is getting very close to the throne in terms of associations with with corruption. Yeah indeed now I want to go briefly back just for a minute to that first story I started with about the altercation between the physical altercation whether it happened or not between harry and william because i think it said something really interesting about royal pr which is that um william and uh harry take very very different approaches so harry hates to see anonymous source quotes about him and his family and megan and the children and so on in newspapers and so he did he went through this whole phase where he was throwing hand grenades at his family where he was saying well i'm going to put my face on camera and he had this idea that if people could see him and see him saying it, then they would believe him.

48:48But it didn't work, and people just looked at him and made their own assessment. And some of the stories that he was saying, there were huge holes in them. And actually, this is the first time, actually, that anyone has had any reason to formally undermine the dog bowl story. But putting that to one side for a minute, it kind of reminds me of something in chess, because I'm a keen chess player. and there's this weird situation where the pawns are on paper the weakest piece on the board except for when they're able to attack any other major piece because nobody is willing to trade a pawn for anything else.

49:25So actually in a sense a pawn can be the most powerful piece on the chessboard if it's got something to defend it. So if you have like a knight your knight is defending your pawn and your pawn is attacking the queen the queen can't take the pawn without sacrificing herself. And so it becomes, in a sense, this incredibly powerful piece that no other piece on the board apart from another pawn can lay down its life in order to get rid of that piece on the chessboard. And in a sense, that kind of weird effect is what's at play in royal PR. Because if you have your spokesperson or your friend or anybody else go off the record and speak to a journalist, the fact that you are hidden becomes this incredibly powerful force where you're walking the tightrope between getting your side of the story out there so that the hardcore royal fans or royal watchers can see it.

50:18It's hugely powerful, but you're not in any way, shape or form putting your powerful person, your royal family member, on the line. So William can do this and there's absolutely nothing Harry can do about it. The only thing he could do would be to, again, go on camera, do another interview and sacrifice himself and his own reputation in order to take a pawn. And it's just not worth it. So Harry was always unwilling to play this classic royal PR game. But actually, you know, it's a hugely effective strategy. And it's one that I don't think Harry has ever fully appreciated what it has the power to do.

50:57Like he was always very angry about it. He was always very hurt about it. but I don't think he ever understood that that is the way you play this game it's it is the effective way and so Harry is is like Andrew he has this slightly indulgent side to him which is that he expects to just be able to do whatever he wants and it to go well and that has really been the story for the Sussexes I think of the last six years is the slow realization from them that it's not necessarily going to and even as big as they are they fell you know they can still fall and they did yes no i agree i mean you know it is and it's it's very you know interesting the way that the the royals use both the mixture of pressure and patronage in order to to to get their way and they play a long game i mean i think the fact that they've waited to to correct some of these stories years later when you would thought the damage has been done um but i think and also So their strategy of a dignified silence is often very effective because either the caravan moves on or people feel, well, you know, because they behave in a dignified way, probably, you know, they didn't behave badly at all.

52:06But I'm not sure that's going to work now. I mean, given that so much is driven now by social media that we don't, they don't have the control of mainstream media in the same way. You have podcasters, you have sub-stack columns and things. Lots and lots of people are looking at the royals and they have really no control over them. So they may have to engage a bit more obviously than they have in the past. Yeah, indeed. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me. That is it's been fantastic to get your insight. Thanks. Always a pleasure. I'm going to take one more quick break, but just a reminder to follow me on Twitter or X as we now call it.

52:40I'm at Jack underscore Royston and you will find all my latest stories for Newsweek. and when I'm back, Megan's Valentine's Day photo showed more of Lilibet's face than she has ever shown before.

53:01Welcome back to the show. Now, Harry and Megan have a long-standing policy that they do not show photographs of their children's faces. This, of course, arises from the many years when Harry was a kid and he would be bombarded by the paparazzi as they tried to photograph his mother, Princess Diana. Even as a child, he was kind of a known face everywhere he went. So he kind of never really had the kind of privacy that ordinary people enjoy. He doesn't want that for his own kids. He wants Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet to, you know, have their own lives and not have to worry about there being photographers around every corner.

53:36And so that has meant that Harry and Meghan have kept the faces of their children out of the public eye for years and years and years. Nobody supposedly anyway knows what they look like, although there have been the odd social media leak and things like that. Now, what's happened recently is that on Valentine's Day, Meghan wanted to put up a nice photo and post with Harry saying, you know, happy Valentine's Day to my favourite people. And so she posted a picture of Harry with Lilibet in his arms and little bit's holding this like bunch of red balloons and it's just you know a nice little valentine's day message saying um you know to my favorite people or whatever it was she said but the interesting thing is that lily is kind of like her profile is visible and not obscure because they sometimes do this thing where they'll put like a little yellow smiley face sign over the kids faces so that you can't see them and there was nothing over lily's face so you can't like Because it's in profile, because it's side on, you can't see all of her features perfectly clearly, but it is definitely the most that Meghan has ever shown Lily's face.

54:42Now, under ordinary circumstances, it would not even be worth commenting on if this was William and Kate or any other celebrity or royal family member, who in some ways really cares what Lily looks like. I don't actually think that many people are clamouring to see the Sussex children anymore, with the Sussex star having slightly fallen anyway. But it's just interesting from the point of view of whether Harry and Meghan are kind of inching closer and closer to just shredding this policy altogether and kind of rowing back this early decision that they made to keep their children out of the public eye.

55:16It feels like Meghan is inching closer and closer and closer. So, you know, honestly, at the point they're at right now, I think if they did just scrap this policy and put pictures of Archie and Lily online, they would probably, you know, some people would say they're hypocrites or whatever. or they were throwing out their principles or whatever people might say, but they always get some backlash anyway. I personally think that it would not create a situation for Archie and Lily equivalent to the one Harry grew up with. Harry and Meghan are already much less sought after as royal family members than they were before.

55:53At the point they first moved out to America back in 2020, sure, yeah, it's true. There were paparazzi outside the house. There were paparazzi flying drones over Tyler Perry's house when they were living there, photographing Archie when he was playing privately in Tyler Perry's mansion. So, you know, that's obviously under those circumstances, I completely understand the concern. But right now it feels like Harry and Meghan are not viewed as hot property anymore. And in that respect, actually, you know, especially with the economy undergoing this extraordinary transformation in the age of AI that we don't really know where it's going.

56:31We don't know, you know, I can't put my hand on my heart and say whether anyone from that generation, which is also my son's generation, will be able to work. Like, I just don't know whether that's true or not. There might not be jobs for Generation Alpha, as they're called, because all of those entry-level positions might have been wiped out by AI. So with that in mind, it might actually not be the worst thing in the world at this stage to give them just a bit of fame. Because it's not going to be a frenzy like the one that Harry grew up with. And it might one day help them out of a jam if they are struggling to make money in an AI-driven economy.

57:10Now, none of us know exactly what the future holds, not even the people who are developing the AIs. but like from my point of view if I was Harry and Meghan I think it's at the point now where I would just scrap this rule give them just a little bit of exposure at a point when most of the kind of frenzy and hysteria and noise has died down anyway and who knows they might even thank you for it at a later date because we're not repeating the past in reality we're actually on the cusp of a totally uncertain future and it's better for them to gear what they're doing towards that uncertain future than it is to fixate on a past that's no longer there.

57:47But that's my take on it anyway. And other than that, it is a perfectly lovely Valentine's Day message. And that's it for this episode of The Royal Report. Be sure to join me every show when I visit the latest royal headlines, embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal. Until next time, I'm Jack Royston. Thank you for listening and a courtesy to you all.

58:08The Royal Report with Jack Royston is a member of The Trust Project.