Get Ready for The Andrew Files

0:01The British government will release the Andrew files. Sarah Ferguson introduced her 22 year old god daughter to Epstein and Harry and Meghan visit Gaza refugees in Jordan. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has now had a week to digest his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. He hasn't commented on it, but of course he's always denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. What's really interesting though is we have now had British politicians vote in Parliament to release the Andrew files, i.e.

0:41the documents that the government holds about his time as trade envoy, because these specific allegations of misconduct in the public office relate to the accusation that Andrew shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein when he was a trade envoy. You know, watch the previous parole report episode I did interviewing Andrew Loney, because we went all into the detail of that whole allegation. But what I want to talk about today is what could be in these files. And it's really, really interesting. They will start round about 2001 because that's approximately when he took on the post. And so I've been digging through some old news stories from that era, from that year, which, by the way, is the same year Virginia Jeffries said that she was trafficked to Andrew.

1:23And actually, there was loads in the papers at that time about Andrew's friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, which was already being described as being an inappropriate friendship that she shouldn't have. She was introducing him to young Russian women, and particularly at a time when he was supposed to be officially visiting America to help mourn 9-11. So there's loads and loads of detail in those stories that shows that even if the palace and the British government might say that they didn't know the specifics of Epstein's abusive children, there was so much they had available to them to go off to realise basically that Andrew needed to be reined in and couldn't just be left to go about this trail of destruction.

2:14So clearly from the Andrew files, when they come out, the big questions are going to be who knew what and when. And there's already some really interesting details. We know Charles opposed Andrew's appointment as trade envoy. So he might actually wind up being one of the people who comes out looking a little better, a little impotent, perhaps, that he didn't manage to get his way or stop this appointment. But actually, it might wind up being Queen Elizabeth II, whose reputation is actually on the line here because she did support it. Also, it might shed light on whether Peter Mandelson, also arrested this week, the former UK-US ambassador, may have had a key role in getting Andrew the job in the first place.

2:58So I want to unpack all of this. But first of all, I want to give an update on where we are with the arrest and the investigation. I want to talk about what was actually said in Parliament, because we had a top UK government politician pile in on Andrew, basically, in a really personal way, launch a really personal attack on Andrew. So it's the strongest words we've had yet in terms of the British government nailing its colours to the mast and saying, even before the police process and criminal investigation has run its course, that Andrew was a wrong one, basically, to use common parlance. So just a quick step-by-step breakdown of the arrest itself, because I skirted over it in last week's show.

3:39So basically, cops went to Sandringham. They arrested Andrew at his home wood farm on the Sandringham State. They searched wood farm, which didn't take them very long, because he'd only just moved there. Probably, I would imagine, they were looking for electronic devices primarily. Then they also searched Royal Lodge, his former home in Windsor. And that is probably the more substantive search operation. At the point that he was being shunted out of Royal Lodge, there were all these reports about the whole house being full of documents, old photographs, stuff from his time, potentially as a trade envoy.

4:15Hard copy documents that may be relevant to their investigation. There have also been reports in the British press that some of that material was moved to a storage facility in South London and that police may well turn their attention there too. In other words, they're going to wind up with so much evidence to wade through. And they've now concluded all of those two main searches, the two properties linked to Andrew. And they're already saying, you know, we're going to give you updates when we can. But this may be some time before we have another update. So in other words, having arrested Andrew, they released him under investigation.

4:48And they're now going to go through a really long process. They've got millions of Epstein files to go through. There's some talk of them using AI to help them trawl through these documents. Hopefully they don't miss anything. I personally would have real humans going through them, but maybe that's just me. But they're also going to have so much hard copy evidence to go through. And a lot of what's going to be in these Andrew files that the business department and the government have is also going to be hard copy too. but let's not forget the actual drama and theater of the day that Andrew was arrested because we also had when he was released from Eilsham police station we had this incredible photograph of Andrew slumped in the back of a car and that photograph was actually hung in the Louvre in Paris somebody like went in with a framed version of it hammered a nail into the wall in the Louvre and actually hung it on the wall on like an empty stretch of wall they didn't take anything down but this is it's one of those kind of seminal moments summed up in a picture and we now have three basically we have a triptych they call it I believe in the art world we have Andrew with his arm around Virginia photographed in Gillian Maxwell's house in March 2001 the most important piece of evidence against him in terms of Virginia's allegations we have this new photo we got from the Epstein files of Andrew crouched over a young woman whose face was blurred out we don't know her age, but we understand that her face was redacted, had a black square put on top of it because she's considered to be a trafficking victim.

6:17And now we have the third part of our triptych of Andrew photos is this image of him in the back of the car trying to hide himself from the cameras. But let's talk about these files. So the big question is, will it only be files held by the business department. So as a trade envoy, he reported to the business department, to UK Trade and Investment. And if it is, then that might lose some really interesting and important documentation. But it could also include the files held by the Foreign Office because there will have been diplomatic cables sent back to Britain talking about Andrew's performance as a trade envoy.

6:58We know diplomats went on the record to criticise Andrew. But also, crucially, will it include cabinet office papers? So if something gets put before the prime minister, gets put in front of the prime minister's desk, then it winds up in going through the cabinet office. And the cabinet office papers usually get made public after 30 years. But the ones related to the royal family often remain secret and never get released. So we could get for the first time a British prime minister commenting on a member of the royal family and how they were doing their job. And the way that would probably happen is there would be a briefing document put before the prime minister, maybe detailing the concerns of a diplomat, maybe detailing the concerns of the royal family themselves, maybe just detailing stories that are being printed in the media.

7:48And then the Prime Minister often will annotate in pen, handwritten in pen, will write thoughts, questions, you know, things to follow up. So we could, via comments on a Cabinet Office document, find out what the Prime Minister of the day, which would either be Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or David Cameron, thought of Andrew during this time. and that would potentially be really sensational. We might get to find out what the Prime Minister knew of the concerns over this friendship. And bear in mind, you know, this might go up, stretch up to the time when Virginia gave her first interview too. So that would all be really interesting.

8:25But I was also, like I said, I was going back through newspaper reports from this era, and it's really striking how much was actually already in the public domain at a really, really early stage, much earlier than you might think. So I'm really looking at a story right now published in The Guardian in April 2001. Now, this is something that's been alluded to in some of the British press. But the one thing about the British press is they're very competitive with each other and they hate giving credit to other news organisations. So I've seen this exact story that I'm about to read you some extracts from referenced in British newspapers who didn't want to give credit to the journalist who wrote it, didn't want to give credit to The Guardian for publishing it.

9:06And so therefore they only really gave like a really scant impression of what was published. But when you hear the actual extracts from some of these stories that are being printed at the time, you realize that even if they didn't know that there was a child abuse aspect, they knew more than enough to realize that they should have clamped down on Andrew. And so this headline, this is April 2001. The headline is Prince Andrew, another royal accident waiting to happen. How true that turned out to be. Here is some of what was printed. So the Duke of York has a problem with his public image, even though he is the Queen's favourite son.

9:41He has served his country for 20 years, Royal Navy, helicopter pilot, but he's bringing too much disgrace. Sorry, rather, his failed marriage didn't even bring too much disgrace on the royal family. But last November, when news came of Prince Andrew's career change when he leaves the Navy this summer, so this is him becoming a trade envoy, The reaction to his choice among Buckingham Palace aides and politicians was at best amusement and at worst astonishment. Most had assumed he would be on the golf course battling to reduce his seven handicap. Instead, the prince told the palace's twice-yearly way-ahead group he would become an international figurehead of British industry.

10:17And so the appointment, this article says, had the backing of the queen, but stunned palisades and politicians because they believe Prince Andrew's personality and lifestyle make him a disastrous choice. That fear of the prince dealing with the press will be reinforced by what has happened to the Countess of Wessex. Whole other story. She was caught in a newspaper sting. Maybe I'll tell you about it another time, but it was going on at that time. Even Prince Charles has understood to have voiced reservations about his brother's suitability. so that is the bit that could play out well for Charles basically if all the papers come to light and it turns out that Charles was there warning don't give this job to Andrew he's not suitable we shouldn't be putting him in these situations and actually it was the Queen, Queen Elizabeth II who kind of doubled down and said actually he should get it then it might be that things go a bit better for Charles but you know you've got a Labour MP saying when I heard about this I couldn't believe it it shows an appalling lack of judgment I suppose there are some countries where his presence might impress, but he is a liability.

11:18Again, you know, those words have turned out to be very, very true indeed. This is where it gets slightly dark. The prince is convinced he can help restore the royal family's battered reputation. Peter Mandelson, former US-UK ambassador up until very recently, who's just been arrested and is under investigation. Obviously, he says he's going to clear his name and his innocence, but we'll see how that goes. Peter Mandelston is understood to have given behind-the-scenes backing for Prince Andrew's cause. The former Northern Ireland Secretary, because that's what he was under Tony Blair's government in the late 1990s, met Andrew while working on the NSPCC's full-stop campaign against child abuse, which Andrew chaired.

12:00The NSPCC is the National Society for the Protection and Care of Children. so you know you might think that that's ironic or hopefully it's not even worse than that within weeks of the ambassador announcement however prince andrew was making what seemed a midlife bid to reclaim his reputation for high living after almost 10 years in the sidelines so they knew what it was all about in january to his mother's great annoyance he was photographed sunbathing on a luxury catamaran off thailand surrounded by topless women now this article doesn't link that to epstein but there have actually been later biographies that said that that particular holiday andrew was with epstein this article though says he was staying at the exclusive amampuri resort on phuket as a guest of another contact made through the nspcc campaign um and so i feel like i need to at some point find the time to unpack what this 10 SPCC campaign was, because this is crazy.

13:00But that episode was followed by sightings showing Andrew return, they say, to playboy habits outside Soho clubs, glitterati bashes in Los Angeles, and turning up at a hookers and pimps Halloween party in New York, where his guest was, they say, his partner at that New York party, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, currently serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking. They don't know that at this point, though, so they simply describe her as the daughter of the late disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell. But they do say that that association caused concern among Palace Eight. So this is April 2001.

13:40This is one month after Virginia says she was trafficked to London and made to have sex with Andrew. Andrew denies that, of course. But it's before her latest... She made three allegations. One was London, one was New York, and one was the US Virgin Islands. And this is certainly before the US Virgin Islands allegations. So before that accusation, you know, alleged incident even took place, Palisades are already worried about Andrew's relationship with Gellar Maxwell. Obviously, they would say, I'm sure that they didn't know the half of it, and no doubt they may not have done. But the big question is, at what point should they have acted?

14:17At what point should they have clamped down on Andrew and stopped all of this? and you've got an MP saying my fear is that he thinks the job will be some kind of sinecure basically you know politicians are already thinking that he's just going to take this job and use it to get whatever he can get so it's really striking to me so early in the timeline of Andrew and his relationship with Epstein they knew way more than I realized they knew like I knew that there'd been this holiday to Thailand there were also you know have since been reports that on that particular holiday, he visited the red light district.

14:51He had this reputation as the party prince, but they were actually concerned about the specific friendship with Gellar Maxwell that is the key to the entire Epstein scandal. And yet they weren't able to stop Andrew. And so the big question is what efforts were made to stop him? Why did they fail? And what does the palace need to change structurally and systemically within the institution of monarchy so that in future royals who are misbehaving can be stopped? But I want to carry on because that's not the end of it. So that report was in April. But let's fast forward a few months to September when 9-11 happens.

15:27Al-Qaeda bomb the old fly planes into the Twin Towers and bring the towers down. America is plunged into mourning, but also into anger. There's fear. You know, huge kind of clouds are gathering over America and the world, basically, because this has turned the whole global order upside down. And, you know, I remember I was a teenager at that time. 9-11 happened on my first day of what we call sixth form in America, which I suppose is kind of, you know, senior year probably in America. So I remember like how crazy it was. And there was anger, there was fear, there was panic, there was mourning, there was grief.

16:08And a month later, Andrew became the first British royal family member to visit America post 9-11. And so this was supposed to be a very somber visit. He went and he met victims. He met widows whose husbands had died. He met emergency services personnel. And he was supposed to be representing Britain and demonstrating that Britain cared about what had happened to America and this grief that had befallen the city. And instead, he did do that, but he was partying with Gilla Maxwell, who was introducing him to young Russian women and a young 22-year-old model. He was 41 at the time. So let's talk a little bit about what was printed in the media, because it's not just the fact that this happened.

16:52It's the fact that there was a whole debate about how terrible it was and specifically geared towards the fact that meant he shouldn't have been a trade envoy. So let's talk about it. So this is Richard Kaye, you know, very seasoned royal correspondent and was personal friends with Princess Diana. They had a very close relationship. He was one of the last people she spoke to before she died. She rang him on the phone. She would call Richie Kaye to ask for advice on how to deal with the media. So suffice to say, he is a very well-connected royal journalist. So before jetting off to New York, he was the first senior member of the royal family to visit the city since the terrible disaster of September the 11th.

17:34Prince Andrew made two telephone calls. The first was to the Queen, who wished him well. The second was to the Prince of Wales, who warned that Charles at the time. He's now the king. Back then, he was the Prince of Wales. And Charles warned his brother in no uncertain terms that he must get it right. From the moment, his chauffeur-driven limousine deposited him at the door of his$2 ,000-a-night hotel suite in ritzy party-going midtown Manhattan. Nowhere was Andrew's progress being monitored more nervously than at Buckingham Palace. And he's actually got a quote from Charles. Richard Kay has a quote from Charles saying that he told his brother last week, he said of his brother, sorry, last week, he is like a fizzy drink that has been shaken up and the top taken off.

18:19So they're all worried about him and they're worried about what's going to happen. And it specifically says that what they're worried about is his hedonistic lifestyle. The good time prints what could go wrong, basically. And also, though, in this article, it tries to shoot down some of what was printed by the other newspapers. But it's really striking now. So basically what happened was he before the night before he was supposed to do his big job commemorating 9-11, he went to a party thrown by Gillian Maxwell. He was supposedly chasing after this 22 year old model called Sophie Dahl, who rebuffed his advances.

19:01There was a point in the night when people started pairing off, and Andrew thought he was going to pair, as a 41-year-old royal family member, thought he was going to pair off with 22-year-old model Sophie Dahl. He was having absolutely none of it and told him where to go. There were stories published in the tabloids at the time saying Andrew made animated efforts to charm her that were rejected, and so instead Guinam Maxwell introduced him to a group of young Russian women. but this interestingly richard kaye shoots this down presumably somebody has given him an off the record denial but he says it wasn't true which is really striking now given everything that we have in email form about gillian maxwell and jeffrey epstein introducing andrew to women so he richard kaye writes yes andrew did not did attend the party since it was given in his honor but he did not stay into the early hours he did not ogle any russian girls had no time to woo Miss Dahl over dinner because he'd already dined and did not share the champagne because he does not drink.

20:03So clearly somebody has given that briefing to the mail, to Richard Kaye, in an effort to try to clear Andrew's name, right? So who's that going to be? Is that going to be Andrew himself or is it going to be a palace staffer? It's not going to be Andrew. So was that a paid up royal staff member? In which case, why did they believe Andrew so easily? Like they believe they were having the very conversations behind closed doors that they ought to have been having about the fact that he wasn't suitable for the power and position they were giving him, and yet they defended him. So look, it's crazy how much was there, you know, like, let's talk a little bit about what Andrew was there to do.

20:46So Richard Kay writes, As I travelled with him on this first overseas trip, it must be said that early indications were impressive. He handled encounters with relatives of victims of the World Trade Center horror with tact and dignity, murmured appropriate words of encouragement to rescue workers as he grappled, like all visitors do, with the sheer scale of ground zero, and announced the honorary knighthood of New York's heroic mayor Rudy Giuliani with Brio. The bombast and arrogance that in the Duke of York lurks just beneath the surface was for once checked, but yesterday it emerged that Andrew could not, after all, resist the law of the bright lights, even on a trip as sensitive as this.

21:26But what's quite interesting is that Kay also says that he did better with the women at Ground Zero than he did with the men, because he gently flirted with them. So even at Ground Zero, he's basically flirting. Like, it's crazy. which is not to say he is without merit. At a fire station which lost the highest number of firefighters when the Twin Towers collapsed, Andrew spent a long time talking to the widow of one of the dead. Jennifer Lang told me that she was impressed by Andrew's compassion and concern which she judged as genuine. Not surprisingly, he handled all his encounters with women well.

22:00Gently flirting with them, he was less confident with men appearing to show little interest in what he was told. Like, it's just crazy the extent to which people bend over backwards to basically try to excuse him, even when all the signs are there. And this is just such a striking example of where that gets you. Like, it doesn't get you anywhere good to constantly make excuses for royal family members. In fact, like, here we are now with this scandal threatening to destroy the monarchy and bring down the monarchy. And if they had got on top of Andrew back then instead of making excuses for him, perhaps none of it, you know, maybe not none of it, because this was all post the first Virginia allegation, but a lot of it might have been avoided.

22:46So there we go. There were also stories published in the New York Post at the time suggesting that the New York City police had been roped in to basically providing security to Ghislaine Maxwell's party that Andrew attended, that Ghislaine Maxwell threw in Andrew's honour. She threw it because he was there. and the New York City police in the after mile from 9-11, one month on from 9-11 wound up being dragged into providing security for it because it happened to be opposite Yasser Arafat's residence at the time. So crazy, crazy stories in 2001. And bear in mind that it was another nine or ten years before the allegations that the police are currently investigating.

23:28So they had all that time in which to clamp down on Andrew and to stop him behaving in this way. and when these trade envoy files come out, presumably we will get, hopefully we will get foreign office material. What did the US ambassador think of all this? What was communicated back to the British government by diplomats in America on the ground who watched all of this play out? What was communicated to the Prime Minister? Was the Prime Minister asked to give a verdict on whether Andrew should keep the position? And actually, if not, why not? and you know this Peter Mandelson link I think definitely needs unpacking and expanding because you know if there was if we're working and this is something Andrew Loney talked about in a previous episode of the Royal Report so do watch that but if Epstein was a foreign intelligence asset or agent and actually increasingly I just think he was he's got that modus operandi at the very least an asset probably an agent then And, you know, does that make Andrew an asset for foreign intelligence?

24:35It kind of does. And it really starting to seem likely. And so how did, why did Peter Mandelson think Andrew would be good for this role? Why did Peter Mandelson even care? You know, they met at this NSPCC child sexual abuse prevention charity event. But why did that lead to Mandelson putting Andrew forward for this role? You know, what conversations were had? Why did Mandelson involve himself in this? And that triangle between Epstein, Andrew and Mandelson, I really think needs to be part of what's explored. And there's talk in Britain of a parliamentary inquiry, like a much broader parliamentary inquiry into all of this.

25:15And I think it's necessary. And I think it should look at making fundamental structural changes to the system of monarchy. and it creates a formal system for bringing royal family members to heal if they are behaving inappropriately and they're behaving in a way that's morally wrong. Because we shouldn't assume that this can never happen again. Just because we can't envisage any particular existing royal right now doing what Andrew did, we shouldn't assume that the weakness, like the moral weakness, the weakness of character that allowed Andrew to make himself Epstein's useful idiot, we shouldn't assume that that is not going to be replicated again at some point in the future but you know it's this is going to be a really anxious period for the other royals because you know william actually said this week he he obviously is president of the baftas he went to the baftas and hamner was you know one of the big like hotly tipped films um and so he was asked if he'd seen it and he said he's not calm enough at the moment to watch like such a harrowing sad movie.

26:18So indicating there that obviously this whole situation with Epstein has made him very anxious. And it's easy to see why. He's going to inherit this mess. When eventually he becomes king, he will be living the legacy of this era of the royal family, which is that a whole generation of young people are growing up and this is their formative experience of the monarchy, is learning about Andrew, learning about how he was allowed to get away with things. And they may be about to find out that the most popular royal family member in history alongside Diana, you know, Queen Elizabeth II, revered around the world, probably actually in some ways, maybe even more popular than Diana because of the kind of the legacy goes for so many years.

27:01It's starting from the Second World War onwards. But yeah, I mean, you know, she may, her reputation may be on the line after death and she's not even alive to be able to fight back or find some way to explain to the public or apologize or anything like that. It will just simply be a really unpleasant stain on the reputation of a woman who was viewed as flawless. You know, she was really viewed as flawless, but we might be about to find out that her one weakness was her favorite son. Right. Well, on that note, I'm going to take a quick break, but just a reminder to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows.

27:40And of course, we're on YouTube, so don't forget to like and subscribe if you're watching there. And when I'm back, Sarah Ferguson introduced her 22-year-old goddaughter to Jeffrey Epstein.

27:57Welcome back to the show. And Sarah Ferguson has in some ways been a subplot, I suppose, to the scandal involving Andrew and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. But the more that time goes on, the more important Sarah Ferguson's role in it all actually becomes. So one aspect of that has been the fact that actually some of these confidential trade documents that Andrew was sharing or allegedly sharing with Epstein, they were being passed around on the same email chains as Sarah Ferguson's debts were being discussed. But the other aspects of it has been her willingness to introduce young women to Epstein.

28:33Now, I've talked on this podcast before about Beatrice and Eugenie, who Sarah Ferguson took to New York to meet Epstein while he was still under house arrest, having pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. But now we have another aspect to this, which is that Sarah Ferguson appears to have introduced her 22-year-old goddaughter to Epstein. So this is a woman called Poppy Cotterell, and her mother was the former lady-in-waiting to Sarah Ferguson. So lady-in-waiting, if you're a royal family member, your lady-in-waiting is kind of your friend, but they're also, they have this like privileged role, which means that they kind of help you, you know, they're your assistant sort of, but they're also your friend.