Fergie, Diddy and More Epstein Revelations

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0:23Sarah Ferguson and Diddy were friends with benefits, according to Andrew Loney. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was motivated by hatred for King Charles. and King Charles reacts as Rod Stewart calls Donald Trump a rat bag. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome back to the show to Andrew Loney, who has a new edition of his fantastic biography entitled, it's coming out in paperback now and it has a whole new chapter with a load of new completely jaw-dropping accounts, claims, allegations, whatever you want to call them.

0:59I think, Andrew, let's start with the one that's captured all of the headlines, which is about Sarah Ferguson and Sean Diddy Coombs. Yeah, it's a surprising revelation. It came from contacts after The Halback came out. I mean, she's always been interested in rap music. She had rappers at the children's birthday parties. She was close to Willen. We know that she was friends with Puff Diddy. In fact, pictures have emerged of her at his party in 1998, his birthday party. But clearly, this is quite a sensational allegation. I mean, it was something that we had to, as you can imagine, the lawyers had to check out very carefully.

1:41And we're standing by it. I mean, she has a long history of actually these sort of relationships. I think I have one of the quotes in the new edition from her long-term personal assistant talking about how she used to get sexually involved with any of her financial benefactors. And there's a quote here from a member of P. Diddy's staff saying that he boasted of slamming her and can't wait to get involved with the daughters. Can't help one dream. It was a boasts by P. Diddy. I should stress that. Yeah. And he is now denying those comments. Yeah, so the specific line is, yeah, he could not wait for Beatrice and Eugenie to come of age so that he could get involved with them.

2:23Well, let me read what the Fergie camp is saying about this. So they have denied it. They've said this is absolute fabricated nonsense, blatantly untrue, and yet another false allegation from him, him being you. So tell us how you feel about that. Tell us your response to that clap back from there. Well, I mean, you know, another false allegation. I mean, they've not said this before. I mean, if they felt that there were unfounded allegations, they've certainly not raised them before. There's a long history, I'm afraid, of Sarah Ferguson denying things and then being found to be true. relationships, for example, with Tiger Woods and with Thomas Muster and people like that.

3:06And I've certainly talked to sources, you know, literally saw her disappear into the bedroom with Thomas Muster. But I think we've got to remember also with Jeffrey Epstein, and she claimed to have publicly basically cut herself off from him in 2011. And yet there's a witness in this book talking of seeing her staying at Epstein's flats in 2013 and 14. And, you know, what's interesting is again the comment was well we only met him twice well there's plenty of photographic evidence showing uh her meeting p diddy on more than two occasions so i think this is is is just an attempt to um to kind of respond to the allegations my publishers have certainly had nothing from from any of her her people and she is certainly somebody who was you know the desperation it comes just bleeds off the page in all of her communications with jeffrey epstein i mean you mentioned her continuing uh friendship with epstein her relationship with epstein beyond 2011 where she when she said she'd cut it off but also that i mean there was that very specific uh communication between them where she you know it got exposed in the british press for the first time that she had epstein had paid off some of her debts and she did this interview with the evening standard where she just it was you know the quotes ran so long and she was just absolutely fawning, saying, you know, I regret that he became involved with me, regret that Epstein became involved in me.

4:33And she was so kind of falling over herself to apologise and said she had abhorred child abuse and deeply regretted the friendship. And then obviously she turned around a couple of days later, or a couple of weeks later, and emailed Epstein, again, fawningly apologising to him and saying things like, you know, I was made to do it by the British media and I was, you know, she kind of says, I was bedridden with grief at the fact that I had to release this statement denouncing you and please forgive me and all of, you know, all of these kinds of things. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, she'll just say whatever she needs to say at the time to get her out of a jam.

5:09Yeah. And I think what's so wonderful about the Epstein releases is we see it, all this hard evidence, you know, hard evidence of Andrew sharing commercially sensitive information, but also, as you say, these fawning emails to Epstein. I know that Epstein was very cross about her distancing herself publicly because he'd been, frankly, very generous to her. There's a long playbook here. Yes, indeed. I've actually just pulled up Fergie's email and I do actually want to read it to you, if that's okay, because I read it originally when it first came out and then so much was coming out at that time.

5:42And then I read it again the other day and it is just so over the top. It's crazy. So let me just read you a couple of extracts. So she says, You can only deduce that something else must have been going on for me to react in this way. So in the eye of your storm, which I know is hellacious, may I ask you to accept my apology for not reaching out to you in the eye of my storm and accept and understand that I was in fear beyond all totality and I could not move left or right because of it and was so close to bedridden with the fear of what was happening. I was paralysed. I was advised in no uncertain terms to have nothing to do with you and not to speak to or email you.

6:22And if I did, I would cause more problems to both you and the Duke and myself. So I shut down and ran away. I was broken and lost. I mean, it sounds like a character from a Jane Austen novel. No, it is extraordinary. And I think the thing that I realised in the course of the four years research was you couldn't trust a word she said. Everything had to be checked because she is to say, well, I'm afraid is a sort of path mythological liar. Indeed, like her husband. We saw this on Newsnight. I mean, even things they don't need to lie about, they seem to lie. So let's talk about all this Fergie stuff in relation to the girls, in relation to Beatrice and Eugenie.

6:57So you've already said that Diddy was talking privately with his cohort, his team, his friends, whatever, about wanting the girls to come of age. Now, she introduced them to Diddy. there's a photo even on Getty of her introducing Eugenie to Diddy who we now know, I mean we didn't know at the time but we now know was himself a predator and what do you think about I want to know what you think about Fergie's willingness to expose her daughters to these predatory men and I also want to know what you think about Beatrice and Eugenie's status now and whether they should still be in the fold with Charles releasing statements on their behalf you know, when Eugenie was pregnant and what you think their future is.

7:42Yeah, well, I mean, you know, she doesn't seem to worry about introducing him to sexual predators. There's also a picture of taking them when they're very young girls to see Peter Nygaard in the Bahamas. Also convicted of abuse offences. Who was also convicted. Yeah. And though they didn't stay with him, I mean, they had a sort of, you know, spent a day with him. And of course, she was one of the first people to greet Epstein when he came out of prison. We've got the picture of Eugenie at the 2006 yacht party, which went pretty wild. But we've also got pictures of Beatrice at the launch of the perfume that P.

8:18Diddy named after Fergie because it supposedly it was based inspired by her smell. I think what makes this whole thing very sort of hypocritical and cynical is, of course, that Fergie has presented herself as a good mother, as someone who is supportive of trafficked women, has run charities, as indeed have the children. and here they are consorting with people who I'm sure they were warned off seeing and who are clearly not suitable to be mixing with if you're a royal or frankly if you're, you know, you wouldn't introduce young people to them. Of course, Fergie was introducing all sorts of people to Epstein even after his conviction, including goddaughters and people.

9:02I think the future of the girls is sort of in the balance now. I think people are waking up to the fact that they were much more deeply involved in this family business than people have realised. I mean, I've got a story there of a Turkish billionaire giving very expensive art to Eugenie. There are lots of gifts being given to them in the Middle East. That's how they were paid. And they continue to present themselves as cultural ambassadors, to use their titles, and according to my sources, to make quite a lot of money in the Middle East, promoting charities and banks and various other things.

9:33They were used, like useful idiots like their father. And I think, you know, if we had a proper royal register where people in the royal family had to declare their business interests and activities like parliamentarians do, I think that would be wise. If there was nothing to hide, they would have nothing to fear. I 100 % agree. That would address these problems. I mean, I understand that William did try and get an audit from them of their business activities and they refused to do so. I mean, a lot of suspicions around how quickly Beatrice has made money from her own AI firm with very, very little knowledge of the subject or experts.

10:08You know, she and Eugenie have basically client relation jobs, which is about client handing their useful contacts on behalf of the company. And so I think, you know, if they were wise, they would, as they seem to beginning to do, distance themselves from their parents. I would suggest they give up their titles. I mean, they're probably going to be stripped of them anyway at some point as we move to a more stripped down monarchy. And I think there would be some public sympathy if they just retired from public life. They could still run their charities. I mean, again, one of the things that I raise in the book is the fact that though quite large sums of money were raised by the anti-slavery collective, which is the charity Eugenie, very little bit of it has actually been spent when there are huge demands for that sort of charity.

10:55more I think was I think double was spent on salaries and actually in terms of grants which came to about 90 ,000 pounds this is not very visible is it you know it's a lot of the charities that the royals work with are very kind of visible you know they hold events where the royals are photographed and where other big prominent celebrities are photographed and you can really see that work is being done they want to advertise it so they bring the cameras in to kind of photograph their centers where they help people meet some of the people who get helped to demonstrate straight to the world that there are real recipients of this money.

11:26And we don't really get that with Eugenie's slavery charity. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's grounds to ask some really searching questions. And who knows? Maybe she has the answer to those questions. But it is a very kind of closed box, I think, for a royal adjacent charity. You really expect that box to be opened. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think this is all the way through. The daughters have never responded to any of the criticisms. I mean, we go back to the 2022 Selman Turk High Court case in which money was, you know, which they can't really account for. 1.3 million was found in the Yorks accounts.

12:03And though Beatrice, I think, made some claim that 25 ,000 she hadn't noticed, first of all, and then it was something, you know, a birthday gift or it was meant to pay for a party. You know, none of these things are very convincing. and they've, you know, have continued to visit the Middle East and take part in some, with some very dubious people like MBS. And that isn't a good look. I mean, even if they're, you know, up to no mischief. Now, some balance in defence of Beatrice and Eugenie. I'm going to read a little extract from your book, which comes from an assistant. This is one of the really interesting passages.

12:37The assistant, this is, you know, you've interviewed an assistant. The assistant saw little of Andrew, who was so foul, The staff walked on eggshells when he was around. The two daughters, she felt, were very much under the control of their mother, but embarrassed by her behaviour. Sarah talked endlessly about having messed up her relationship with Diana, her love of the Queen. She hated Philip and Edward and her parents. The assistant was struck by her immaturity. She wanted to go back to childhood. She had this constant need to be wanted, with the result that she had no boundaries. Now, I kind of get the very similar vibes of Andrew, but it's very interesting that the assistant felt that the girls were controlled by their mother, who very clearly is exactly as described.

13:23She's a child. She's narcissistic. She has a constant need to be loved and told how wanted she is, and she's total chaos. And so I suppose it's very tough for the girls. But I also am interested in whether you think, you know, it's occurred to me the other day that they are potentially material witnesses in the police investigations that are going on now. Because at the heart of those investigations is this question about why Andrew was leaking confidential information to Jeffrey Epstein, if that is in fact what the police find has happened. And it appears that one possible explanation is that that was a quid pro quo with Epstein, that Epstein was going to pay off Fergie's debts because Andrew was leaking these documents.

14:06And the kind of chain of events through which this all happens appears to me to begin in 2009 when Fergie takes the girls out to Miami for lunch with Epstein. And they were there and they took part in that lunch and they were sat there bearing witness, no doubt, to everything that was being discussed. So if I was a detective in this case, I would want to interview the girls about what they knew about that fundamental question. Like, what was the nature of this relationship? Why did Fergie, you know, what did Fergie and Epstein talk about? Why did they get taken to Miami? What was it all about?

14:40Was it, you know, was there this big operation to pay off Fergie's debt by leaking material? They might know. They might be able to answer that question. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the reasons that the girls were often taken was that they had security with them and all the sort of perks of being royals. And Fergie liked that. It meant that, you know, she could get VIP treatment. But I think one of the things I've been trying to get for the last five years is just the lists of people who are on these taxpayer funded trips and the government are refusing to give them up. I mean, they're continuing to use all sorts of bizarre excuses, health and safety and national security and things.

15:18But we do know, I know from talking to diplomats, that the girls were on a lot of these trips, particularly to the Middle East, not declared. I mean, they're not in the court circle or anything. And, you know, these I'm told that these contacts they've made on these trips, they've now been able to exploit. But you're absolutely right. But there's a long there's a long sort of playbook here in terms of basically people, businessmen giving money to the Yorks in return for introductions or appearances that will help them. Can I slow you down for a minute there? Because I don't want to move off the point you just made just yet.

15:53Because that's fascinating. So if Fergie was using the girls to get de facto security for herself, then I wonder if that was part of the reason why Charles wanted to take that security away. Because obviously, the girls lost their police protection around about the time they finished university. And that was also a precursor to the conversations about whether Archie and Lilibet, Harry and Meghan's children would get police protection. So if that does all actually ultimately go back to the fact that Fergie had hacked the system and found a way to ensure that she maintained her police protection, that would be something that had a ripple effect all the way through to the next generation and the generation after.

16:33Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my understanding, talking to Di Davis and others, the former head of royal security is that they did security assessments and worked out that the girls were not at risk. And therefore, this was a saving they could make, particularly as I mean, at this period, we were moving more towards a slimmed down monarchy. Andrew, of course, is very cross that he wasn't on the balcony for events then. I mean, there was quite a lot of criticism in the press on their year off, both girls, where they had royal security at huge costs. Yeah. And there was no real risk. So I don't know.

17:03But I mean, I think those were some factors. But it's interesting if that is the case. I mean, certainly one of the criticisms of Fergie was that she kind of pulled the kids out of school often when she wants to go off somewhere, just because of all the perks that came from having them there. But it might have shaped the decisions about royal security. But my instinct, and I think from what I've picked up, is that there were wide ranging reviews of how money could be saved on security. I think one of the scandals is just how much it costs and the total sum is hidden. The claim is always that it's going to be dangerous for their security, but there's no reason why we shouldn't know the total cost, even if we don't know how it's apportioned.

17:43And on that note, I'm going to take a quick break, but just a reminder to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows. And when I'm back, Andrew Loney is still with me and we're going to talk about intelligence assessments of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

18:01Welcome to the show and this is the second part of my latest interview with Andrew Loney about the re-release of his paperback edition of his fantastic biography entitled Just Like the Original Hardback, the new version is absolutely packed full of extraordinary revelations. There is so much in the book about Andrew too and one of the things that really jumped out for me. I want to talk about some of his deplorable behavior. But first of all, let's talk about intelligence. This is a story which is, I think, is beginning to emerge as one about national security. You know, people first of all thought it was about sex trafficking.

18:38Then they realized it was actually about a huge sort of money-making operation and financial corruption and compromise of the political establishment. But I think there is a very strong intelligence element to it there's a report that i was given dated january 2026 from the fbi about andrew mountbatten windsor political corruption showing that he's been basically been compromised by russian intelligence linked to russian criminal gangs and has done so willingly uh it's extraordinary things or also partly because of his sort of if they say, long-term hatred of his older brother, Charles. That's a fascinating line.

19:20It is. Sorry? That's a fascinating line about that he was motivated by hating Charles. I mean... Yeah, it is. I mean, we've never, you know, we've always known the relationship was never close. I mean, they're very different characters. I mean, there's a bit of an age gap. And clearly, Andrew's been a thorn in Charles' side. He kind of thinks he can do Charles' job better than Charles'. But it's interesting that Tim Shipman, political editor of The Spectator, has also through his sources and Whitehall begun to run this story. And I mean, certainly from my investigations, there are lots and lots of Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies sort of swimming in the same waters as the royals.

19:57It seems to be a very easy way to penetrate the establishment. If you compromise someone like the Yorks, get them sort of either on side or blackmail them, they will give you some very useful introductions. and you know we've seen quite a lot on ten bow the the chinese alleged chinese spy who was very much at the forefront of picture palace in china but there's a man called johnny hon who was paying sarah fogson large sums of money uh each year as a sort of brand ambassador who's very close to both north korean and the chinese governments and their intelligence apparatus he did some work i think for the north korean communist party if i recall correctly which he even fenced him he opened the advertised on his website and yet he still built up these relationships with members of the british royal family it's quite extraordinary yeah and i mean he at one point was offering people selling people the chance to have christmas lunch at buckingham palace with prince philip i don't know how that was going to work out um but there are these these figures um and uh you know i think that the the russian side hasn't been looked at sufficiently i mean in the hardback i i interviewed a man called tim reilly who works for crawl and has talked about the you know the the amount of compromise that there is on Andrew from basically being caught in honey traps, whether it's in Russia or Central Asian Republics, Libya, China, Middle East.

21:19I mean, they've all seemed to have done it. And people were providing prostitutes for him. And he didn't seem to care. And there are more stories in this updated version of basically hookers coming in on these state-funded trips to entertain him. It's two people, with both Andrew and Fergie, it's two people who are enormously psychologically weak and are therefore very easily manipulated. It was so easy. This is the thing that gets me, is it was so, so, so easy in both cases to own them, basically, for Russian intelligence, seemingly, to get in a position where they owned Andrew and for Epstein to get in a position where he owned Fergie.

22:03But it was just so easy because they were so weak, they were so inept, they were so narcissistic, and that made them vulnerable. But I am going to just read the extract that you've got in your book from this report. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was cultivated by RIS, that's basically Russian intelligence, to cultivate a figure close to the British royal family as protection for them to conduct both intelligence and corruption operations within the EU, the UK and the US, using AMW as a front provided legitimacy to corruption operations worldwide. And then, yes, as you say, you've got that the motivation was hating Charles.

22:43But to compromise Britain's national security because of basically a family rivalry is crazy. And you've got here that, so the source said the former prince was not blackmailed or otherwise coerced into this role, but was a willing participant in those schemes due to financial, sexual, and personal reward. It is a fundamental flaw in the monarchy that if you have somebody like Andrew who's psychologically incredibly weak, it creates an open door that foreign intelligence agencies can just walk right through. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, this is why there needs to be more accountability and transparency.

23:22And one of the problems was that people did turn a blind eye, whether it was the palace or in number 10 or in the foreign office. There was no proper supervision of what he was doing. He was meant to be tasked by the Foreign Office or a liaison unit between business and trade and Foreign Office. But that didn't happen. And he kind of just chose where he wanted to go. And embassies would basically find excuses not to have him come because he was a liability. I mean, there's, I think, quite an amusing story about how an embassy was asked to bid for him and deliberately put in a bid where he had to get up early and visit boring factories.

24:00and to ensure that he didn't want to come there. For example, I talked to diplomats at the consulate in New York, and he and Fergie were always hanging around there trying to – she would often kind of muscle herself into meetings in order to kind of swap business cards with people. But they were always hanging about trying to get them to line up useful contacts for them. And I think one of the interesting things is there is a very close relationship, clearly between the financial benefactors of the family, whether it was David Tang paying off her debts or David Rowlands giving loans that weren't repaid, or Jeffrey Epstein.

24:37They all clearly were then given introductions through Andrew's job as a trade envoy. And Charles, you know, had warned about how Andrew would abuse his position and he was ignored. I mean, it was pushed through very much by the Queen, Tony Blair and Peter Maddelson. And again, one of the interesting sort of developments is that while Tony Blair has not said anything, and he was deeply involved in making decisions to appoint Andrew, I mean, he was deeply involved in Kazakhstan. I mean, I think there's a reference there to making 18 million pounds from his activities there. Wow. Jeff, Gordon Brown has now got involved and has clearly done quite a lot of research himself.

25:15He's highlighted the number of flights coming in with sex trafficked women, the fact that there were no proper checks done on them. They were meant to be in transit, but often they were kind of just because they came in on private flights, they would kind of stayed. And the fact there were all these women being put up in flats around London, as there were in New York, who were getting visas. And the idea was that they would launch their modelling careers. But of course, they were kind of just hostages kept to supply some of these men to provide the compromise. Yeah, indeed. Now let's talk about some of the stuff you've got in there, things that Andrew did that were deplorable.

25:57So you've got this nuclear submarine where Andrew behaved so terribly to everybody and, you know, criticised another submariner for dressing slovenly. And so somebody, you know, he left his gloves, his kid leather gloves, flying gloves behind in the control room. and one of the sub-ret mariners, you've put, took him, took them to a bathroom and did an unspeakable act basically inside the glove and then returned them, lifting the morale of the crew. You've got, his protection officers disliked him so much that at one point when somebody saw, you know, an intruder, which turned out to be Andrew, in the grounds of the estate, they basically went, you know, and roughed up this kind of intruder, clearly knowing full well it was Andrew, and you've put, took an inordinately long time to realise who it was.