No Epstein Charges For Prince Andrew

0:01Prince Andrew will not face Epstein charges, Queen Elizabeth Sue of Meghan is under the microscope and King Charles hosts the French president. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's chief royal correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Prince Andrew has been given the clearest indication yet that he will likely never face charges relating to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Now, never is obviously a big word, but that is the overwhelming likelihood at this point. The news came in the form of a memo by the US Department of Justice and the FBI, which said there will be no new cases basically brought against uncharged third parties.

0:44So this memo was published by Axios and seen by ABC News and has been confirmed separately to Newsweek by the DOJ. And it read this systematic review revealed no incriminating client list. There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. Now, obviously, that includes Andrew. Andrew is an uncharged third party because he was accused at civil court in New York by Virginia Jeffrey of rape. he was accused of, well, she claimed anyway, that she was sex trafficked to London, New York and the US Virgin Islands by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in order to have sex with him and feared for her life if she refused.

1:34Now, Andrew settled that case out of court for a substantial undisclosed sum while denying liability. And indeed, he's always denied her account. However, that civil litigation is not the same as being charged. It's an obvious point, but the systems, the languages used by the court and police can sometimes be confusing for people. So I'm going to make it all the same. You are charged as part of a police investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing only. And the act of being charged is when that investigation turns into a case at criminal court, basically. So in other words, you know, you're under investigation for a period of time at some point the police might want to arrest you if the prosecutor decides that the case is strong enough for you to go to court then you will be charged and from that point on it then becomes a court process now back in 2020 the fbi applied through formal channels to the uk home office to speak to prince andrew but his lawyers at the time were at pains to say that they that the fbi sought his testimony as a witness and that they had confirmed to Andrew that he was not a target of their investigation, i.e.

2:45they were not considering or pursuing the prospect of criminal charges against him. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police in Britain have reviewed Andrew's case a whole load of times and they have always concluded that any investigation into his relationship with Epstein should be based in America because that is where most of the evidence would be drawn from. So the Metropolitan Police didn't charge him. New York Police didn't charge him. Obviously, the original Florida investigation didn't charge Andrew. And so that means that he falls into that category. He is an uncharged third party and the Trump administration have therefore indicated he will not likely face a new investigation in America.

3:29Virginia Joffrey also very tragically died this year. Now, there will be an inquest, but a family statement shortly afterwards suggested it was a suicide. Some family have cast doubt on that, and hopefully we will learn more in time. But for now, Virginia would not be alive to give evidence to any case that might be brought. And that would render a conviction virtually impossible because there would be so much of the case would rest on her evidence. So that arguably is it. It is a virtual certainty now that Prince Andrew will not be prosecuted over his connection to Jeffrey Epstein. It was suggested in The Sun this week that this effectively lifts a kind of unofficial travel ban, keeping him from going to America.

4:10No, it was not any kind of official travel ban. It was just the idea was if he goes to America, he might suddenly be hauled over the coals unexpectedly. So, I mean, I guess that's arguably true. I have always pointed to the fact that, you know, the FBI really have never pursued with any vigor any of the men in Jeffrey Epstein's life. So it was arguably never that likely that he would suddenly be collared at the airport and thrown in the back of a cell. But it is true that he might well have feared that outcome and have not travelled to America as a result. But in all honesty, he's barely left the house since 2019 and he has very little money, so I suspect he will probably be in full aristocratic hideout mode which basically involves trying to make whatever cash you have last as long as humanly possible while living in a ridiculously oversized 30-room mansion in Andrews K's Royal Lodge.

5:08So actually the aristocracy is very good at this. Many of them who have never been accused of any kind of crime do something very similar, which is to basically stay with friends in their huge palatial homes for free when the opportunity is there, and otherwise just hide out spending as little money as humanly possible and living off your inheritance or whatever. And it does this whole saga, you know, this new memo from the DOJ and from the FBI. Actually, it does nothing to help Andrew in the eyes of the British public. It does nothing to help his reputation. Because obviously the public made up their minds a long time ago.

5:44And it all goes back to that interview that Prince Andrew gave to Newsnight in 2019. and the public found Andrew's answers to the searching questions that the journalist Emily Maitlis asked him to be farcical and absurd. His claim, for example, that he could not have met Geoffrey on that night in London because he was at a children's birthday party at Pizza Express in Woking in the late afternoon. People laughed at, you know, and not to mention his suggestion that her account of him sweating profusely must have been wrong because he at the time had a temporary medical inability to sweat that had since healed.

6:22He said he fought in the Falklands War and that had left him with this rare medical inability to sweat, but it had gone away in the meantime, rendering him able to sweat again. It was all a little far-fetched, I think many people thought. In fact, actually, if the memo had any impact on anybody's reputation, it actually appears to have sent this kind of chill wind through Trump's base. Because the Epstein story has been massive in MAGA circles. And, you know, many kind of Trump supporters felt there was a decidedly Democrat flavor to some of the famous men accused of being Epstein's clients. You know, many Trump supporters felt the swamp was engaged in a conspiracy of silence.

7:05And there was a suggestion that the Trump administration was about to blow the lid right off the whole conspiracy. Alina Haber, for example, said there would be names to come out and implied there would be new cases and she even talked about the importance of letting those individuals have their time in court which sounds like new charges. She went on P.S. Morgan Uncensored in February at a time when she was counseled to the President and said, America needs to remember one thing. We are going to be promises made, promises kept. But when you're dealing with victims, and by the way, this is a perfect example of a case that was vetted, that went through to trial, that had testimony and was prosecuted the right way.

7:48In this case, in Epstein's case, it is incredibly disturbing. We have flight logs, we have information, names that will come out. And she seemed to make a direct reference to new charges. She said, I believe in accountability, so you have to now go through your process. Now, I won't say they're guilty until they go through their time in court. But again, now it's time for accountability. Well, that is an extraordinary thing to say unless you know you're going to charge somebody because where is the accountability? Obviously, she's now left eating those words. Pam Bondi as well at one point appeared to confirm that the Epstein client list was sitting on her desk.

8:29The White House has since tried to row back that suggestion. but she was asked on Fox News and said, oh, I'm sure we're hearing that you're going to release the client list. Is that really going to happen? Now, I'm sure many of you have seen this clip already but Pamboni replied, it's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that. I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files. That's all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the president from all of these agencies. now the White House have said she didn't mean the literal client list she simply meant the Epstein files in general although that's not what she said um but you know I am actually completely willing to believe that she was talking nonsense on camera like that she just went on tv and talked nonsense and that she had no idea what was in the files on her desk um and just responded um without challenge uh because she just wanted to tell everybody that they were going to get what they want but this is also you know it's part of the flaw in the way that these people conduct themselves publicly which is to just always feed the conspiracy theory and never challenge it and never encourage people to confront the fact that some of the things they believe about the world may not actually be true and now bondi is also left eating her words um and it was a breathtakingly stupid thing to say um but yeah she's she's they are partly living with the reality of what happens when you just constantly ramp up the conspiracy theories and constantly tell people that you know there's this swamp that needs to be drained um because then when you get into power you either have two options you know you either become the swamp or you have to drain the swamp and if it turns out that you know the swamp was partly a fiction then you have nothing to drain um And there's an aspect to all this, which is pure distilled MAGA, which is that there are absolutely major allegations against big name public figures who knew Epstein and were friends with Epstein.

10:28And there are also questions to answer for major public figures who have been named on a flight log, for example, but deny wrongdoing. But there is no client list. There isn't, and there never was, in the sense that there isn't a document where Epstein tracked the name specifically of the people who he had incriminated. So what you have is like any court case, you have sources of evidence. There's a context book of all the people Epstein knew. But he didn't annotate that context book with information about whether those people were guilty or innocent. And then there are flight logs of people who flew on Epstein's plane, which includes Prince Andrew for all it's worth, and it also includes Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

11:08They're both among the past passengers on Epstein's private jet. But of course, flying on a plane is not the same as taking part in an illegal act, nor of knowing that illegal acts were taking place. And all three men, Andrew Trump and Clinton, all deny wrongdoing. You know, the whole essence of a criminal court case is about trying to prove criminal charges. And anybody under the sun, no matter what they've done, would always plead not guilty if they thought they were going to get let off the hook. So the act of pursuing the kinds of cases that the Trump administration have alluded to, that Alina Haber alluded to, is in essence having the evidence to convict people.

11:50It's not having a bunch of names and a document. It's having actual evidence capable of convicting somebody of a criminal offence. And then there are the testimonies of the women who accused Epstein, which we've had for a long time. You know, they've given interviews to Netflix as well as depositions and civil cases. And we have those from a whole variety of different sources. And there are the names of, you know, there are other names that have come out in court documents, in court filings. So, for example, there are accounts of Epstein talking about other famous people. You know, Johanna Schauberg, one of the victims, says, you know, she says Prince Andrew gropes her breasts.

12:26and she also says that Epstein at once told her that Bill Clinton likes young girls which he of course denies but that evidence that means Bill Clinton is in court filings but that evidence on its own would not be enough to secure a criminal conviction in court, not even close because she's not claiming to have seen anything and Bill Clinton would naturally say that it isn't true Epstein isn't alive to tell anybody and even if he was it still would not necessarily reached the threshold for a criminal conviction. So in summary, there's no list of people that Epstein helpfully prepared in order to make life easier for the FBI.

13:05Like that's not what criminals do. But there is a lot of evidence. And this is what's so frustrating about the concept of a client list is that it makes everything sound so breathtakingly simple that no work should ever be needed to be put into establishing the truth. And that muddies the water about what people should be demanding from the FBI, the DOJ and the Trump administration. There is no list to release. So what people absolutely should be doing is to try to force the FBI and the DOJ to say why nobody other than Epstein and Maxwell has ever been charged. So right now what we have is a statement saying they haven't found evidence sufficient to pursue cases.

13:45But is the issue that there are problems with the evidence? Like, is it a lack of, you know, they have some people in mind, but they have a lack of evidence against them or problems with the evidence that does exist. So for example, is it that there are, you know, there's witness testimony that they think would be undermined in court. And if they name no names, you know, they implicate no one, they impugn nobody's reputation. But is it because alternatively of an interpretation of the law? You know, this can sometimes happen is that the public think that the law says a certain thing. But when you drill down into the actual wording of the law, there is a kind of get out clause.

14:27So, you know, if a famous man does not know the nature of Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with a girl, does that have an implication for whether or not he's guilty of criminal offence? For example, I'm not particularly advancing that argument. I'm saying, is that the kind of problem that they have encountered? Or alternatively, is this a policy decision? Has somebody from on high just simply said, stop digging, don't look at this anymore? Now, what the Trump administration should be able to do if they are so concerned to be transparent and open is to answer those questions. You know, what is the problem here?

15:10Because they've started this fire. They ignited this huge fire underneath this issue and created the expectation that they would blow the whole thing wide open. And actually, what they then wound up doing is thrown a massive bucket of cold water over that fire. And actually, they've gone way further than I'm aware of any past administration going in saying that there is no evidence Epstein sought to blackmail prominent individuals. Now, I don't have conquered the Biden administration ever saying that. I don't think even people who have denied allegations against themselves have said that Epstein didn't blackmail people.

15:44And that actually is a far bigger statement, I think, in reality than the one about the client list. because it has long been certain that Epstein collected compromats on famous people with the intention of using it to leverage power over them. I suppose one issue there is how you define blackmail. For example, if Epstein acquires a video of a famous figure with the intention of bringing it out in the event of a rainy day, but he never actually winds up doing it, is that evidence of an attempt to blackmail? At what point does the FBI feel that there's evidence of a blackmail operation? Do they need there to actually be a record of Epstein threatening somebody in order to have evidence of blackmail?

16:26Because I think what the public imagine exists is more a kind of store of incriminating evidence and videos of people. and this isn't this speaks to another slightly vague aspect of the memo like is do they are they sitting you know we've been told they're sitting on thousands of videos and we've been told that those videos can't be released because the women in those videos are underage um and so we've been told effective and you know they constitute child pornography as a result so but what we've not been told is anything at all about who the men in those videos are so is any man other than Jeffrey Epstein in those videos like it should be possible for them to answer that question is the issue that all the videos show only victims plus Jeffrey Epstein and maybe Ghislaine Maxwell or other you know staff or whatever uh is is the issue that there are no famous men in those videos because they haven't actually said that they've said there's nothing in the videos to warrant a further investigation.

17:35But if it's really true that no famous powerful men are depicted in those videos, then why can't we know that? Why can't we have an explicit statement about that? Alternatively, is there a problem with using the videos for evidential purposes? For example, have they been unable to identify the men in those videos, perhaps because their faces aren't visible or something like that. Like if there's a problem, if there are other men other than Jeffrey Epstein depicted in those videos, why is that not capable of giving rise to a criminal investigation? They should be able to tell us something about that if they are as committed as they said they were to accountability and transparency.

18:21As it stands though, it does honestly feel a little bit like they've started this massive fire under the idea that they're about to release all this stuff. And then they've squashed it right after Elon Musk went on Twitter and said they were going to squash it because Trump is in the Epstein files. And even that, again, is an example of them falling to the sword of their own past rhetoric. Now, Trump actually responded to that by that, to Elon Musk's tweet by resharing a post by Epstein's former lawyer saying that he had asked Epstein in his final days whether he had any incriminating evidence on Trump and that Epstein had said no.

19:00But needless to say, this is so classic of the kind of deep-rooted flaw within MAGA because, you know, Trump is in the Epstein files. Like, of course he's in the Epstein files. We already knew he was in the Epstein files. The reason we know it is because the Epstein files are all the evidence that we already had in court, including flight logs, which we knew that Trump was in. We already knew that because we know very well that Trump has a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. So there's not necessarily anything actually that's that dramatic about saying Trump's in the Epstein files. But the whole point is that a whole section of American society have been led to believe that the Epstein files is full of all these incredibly explosive, damning, damaging revelations against people.

19:50And actually, the Epstein files are full of bits and pieces of evidence that may or may not add up to a case that has a reasonable prospect of conviction. And in some cases, it won't. It guarantees there are people who are going to be mentioned in the Epstein files who have done nothing wrong because they just passed through. Some of them, Some of the people mentioned in the Epstein files are victims. Some of them are witnesses who testified on behalf of the prosecution to convict Ken and Maxwell. You know, the Epstein files is just all the records relating to Jeffrey Epstein. So there's going to be countless names in there.

20:26But this is what happens if you encourage people to believe all of their conspiracy theories must be true to the maximum degree. Because that's what conspiracy theories in the modern world are. It's about constantly encouraging people on social media to not just believe that there is something there, that there is something that needs to be investigated. It's about encouraging people to believe that all of their theories are true in the most extreme form to the maximum possible degree. And that isn't true. That just is not reality. And I say this as somebody who fundamentally believes that Jeffrey Epstein was a horrific predatory paedophile who destroyed lives, like hundreds and hundreds of lives.

21:12So I'm not trying to chuck any cold water over any investigation. And actually, I would like to see investigation. I think I've even said I'd like to see Prince Andrew have to defend himself to a jury. And I think that in the interests of not just accountability and not just justice, but also people's faith in democracy, people need to see the evidence tested in court. but so I'm in favour of new cases I'm in favour of new investigations and I really think that there is a massive moral imperative on the DOJ and the FBI to explain why they've never pursued a case against a single man in Jeffrey Epstein's life a single friend or associate of Jeffrey Epstein and they've never, to my knowledge they've never ever ever said why they've never said whether there is evidence but just not enough evidence, or whether there is zero evidence.

22:10And that, I think, is a damning indictment of them, and it's precisely because I want the pressure to be applied to that pressure point, rather than this made-up fantasy about a client's list. That is precisely my problem with the conspiracy theory, is that it draws energy to the wrong place, campaigning for the release of something that simply doesn't exist. But to go back to Prince Andrew, you know his name isn't going to appear on any unique client list because it doesn't exist but there are still major questions for him to answer and he's never succeeded in answering them so we've all seen the photo of him with virginia jeffrey and there is another epstein victim i've spoken about this on the podcast before um who says she was shown the photo before it was published in the media and she has given an account of virginia describing the fact that she had sex with andrew allegedly he always denies it crucially this woman Caroline Andreano who's another Epstein victim does not take Virginia's side in fact she said Virginia didn't deserve compensation so she's not just somebody that Virginia's wheeled out to say that you know everything Virginia says is true she's actually somebody who challenges and disagrees with Virginia and she previously told the Daily Mail I asked her if she'd been to the palace and she said I got to sleep with him I said what you're effing with me and she said no i got to sleep with him she didn't seem upset about it she thought it was pretty cool um and she added i don't think she i virginia deserves any compensation i don't think she was coerced into doing anything and she said that she uh she said to virginia well show me you know get me a photo then virginia had texted her from london saying i'm with prince andrew and uh carolyn andriano said no you're not i don't believe you get me a photo then and sure enough virginia came back from london and when she was back in america produced this picture the one that has we've all seen of her with andrew so in other words there's corroborating evidence to back up the general thrust of virginia's account of being of having sex with andrew when she was a 17 year old sex trafficking victim and now 17 is over the legal age of consent in britain which is at 16 years old but it's also you know it's only a few years older than Andrew's daughters were at the time, who were kind of in their early teens, 1988 and 1990 birthdays, and this was 2001.

24:31So Andrew was friends with a paedophile, arguably America's most notorious paedophile, who carried out industrial scale abuse of underage girls. And that sex trafficker brought one of his victims to London, we know from flight logs, leading to a photograph of Andrew with his arm around Virginia, which an independent third party has some evidence to corroborate. And nobody really in Britain appears to believe genuinely that that photo is fake outside of perhaps Andrew's ex-girlfriend who has gone on TV to say that Lady Victoria Hervey. So how really did that photo come to exist? If Andrew has nothing to hide, he should have been able to explain a lot of this on Newsnight, but instead it was his very attempt to explain himself that definitively destroyed his reputation in the eyes of the British public.

25:25And I think, you know, obviously Virginia is no longer with us and she did get a substantial payout and obviously it didn't make her happy if the family's account of her suicide is correct. So that is tragic in and of itself. but I suppose that some accountability has taken place. Right, on that note, I'm going to take a quick break, but before I do, remember to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows. And when I'm back, what Queen Elizabeth II's cousin said about Meghan and Harry.

26:06Hello and welcome back to the show. Now, Queen Elizabeth II has been a repeat battleground for Prince Harry and Meghan and their detractors. On the one hand, Harry told Hoda Kotb in 2022 that they had a special relationship, and there are things the Queen could say to him that she couldn't say to anyone else. On the other hand, royal sources have said, for example, that Harry and Meghan blindsided the Queen when they announced their royal exit publicly back in 2020, and have upset her at various other points since. Oprah and so on and so on. You can probably do the maths yourself. Now, another voice has now been added to the mix, that of Lady Elizabeth Anson, who is Queen Elizabeth's cousin and the organiser of many of her parties.

26:51Now, the longstanding royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith spoke to Anson over numerous years and collected kind of lots of notes from their meetings. And some of it she fed into her biographies, but she's now kind of dumped a whole load of these quotes onto her substack blog, Royal Extra. It should be pointed out that, obviously, as everybody knows already, Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, and so is not alive to contest any of this material. For what it's worth, she never would have done anyway, because the palace have an actual policy that they don't comment on biographies or that kind of material.

27:29Now, I suppose, hypothetically, Lady Elizabeth Anson might have taken issue with something Sally Beddelsmith wrote or the way it was presented, but can't because she too passed away. She actually died in November 2020. So she passed away before Harry and Meghan did their Oprah interview, which is worth keeping in mind because, you know, Oprah was the point where it really did become full blown war. And because all of these comments were made before that point, they cannot have been inflected or, you know, coloured by an understanding of the kind of full-scale warfare that took place at the time of Oprah.

28:07So that does kind of make it a bit more interesting. But essentially the most striking thing she says is that Harry was at one point rude to the Queen for 10 minutes in an argument about where Harry and Meghan, or who was going to marry Harry and Meghan. So essentially the argument is that Harry asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to marry them at St. George's Chapel, but St. George's Chapel is actually run by the Dean of Windsor, and so he didn't request permission from the Dean of Windsor, which is the kind of proper procedure you should go through. So Anson told Bedell Smith, Harry seems to think the Queen can do what she wants, but she can't.

28:47On the religious side, it is the Dean of Windsor's jurisdiction, and she suggests it caused significant conflict between the Queen and Harry. She said Harry has blown his relationship with his grandmother. She said she was really upset. I was shocked when the Queen told me this, how she was so saddened. I had no idea about the conversation, that he was rude to her for 10 minutes. They had tea with her the day before yesterday. I don't think we know exactly when that was, but I think this is in the build-up to the wedding. So she says they had tea with her the day before yesterday. She was trying to find out about the wedding dress and Meghan wouldn't tell her.

29:24But she does say that the Queen and Harry patched things up by April, which was one month before the wedding, May 2018, they got married. But she felt very left out. So he wrote her a letter about what was happening. So one thing that's really interesting is that Anson, who planned a lot of the Queen's parties, including her 80th birthday party, was trying to kind of have a conversation with Harry and Meghan about how the wedding was going to go and trying to give Meghan ideas and was getting rebuffed basically. Meghan was just kind of, you know, stonewalling and kind of not engaging. And eventually she says, Harry wrote to me and said they were going another way.

30:04He said, I am close to my grandmother and she is content with this. But Anton says, when I spoke with the queen, she said she is not at all content. So another thing that's quite interesting is, you know, Anson's characterization isn't all bad. She says one thing that actually kind of supports some of Harry's perspective on his relationship with the Queen, which is that when the Queen needed to delegate, Harry was the star. So, you know, Harry saying that he has a special relationship with the Queen and so on, kind of chimes with that aspect of what Anson's saying. Now, I don't know overall whether that helps him or hurts him because, you know, in a way it sort of lends weight to the other things that Anson said and to her own characterization of her closeness to the Queen.

30:47but she also liked Meghan initially said she was poised, very natural, intelligent and thoughtful adding that you can feel a very loving connection between Harry and Meghan that is but later said the jury is out on whether the Queen likes Meghan but there's this kind of slightly weird thing about where she says that she had this nickname Jemima for the Queen which never exactly explains where it came from so there are some oddities in there um but that you know another aspect of it is she talks a little bit about um william and kate not getting on with megan and but that the queen was aware of this and it seems to be at an earlier point than we kind of properly knew um so we had a indication at about in about february 2018 that there was some kind of tension because there was this event the royal foundation forum where all four of them were sat there being interviewed together and the interviewer kind of says do you ever disagree about things and williams says oh yes is it even resolved um and harry was kind of like trying to laugh it off and megan just sat there looking incredibly awkward not saying anything and harry put it in his book that he couldn't remember why it was but maybe it was something to do with megan wanting to borrow kate's lip balm and it was all very weird um so it could be that that event or whatever they were referencing at that event was what gave rise to the Queen finding out that things were not going well but actually Sally Bedlesmith says Anton told her that the Queen was aware of there being some difficulties two weeks before the wedding on May the 19th and the other big argument that's known about which was about Charlotte's bridesmaid's dress not fitting was literally days before the wedding so So if Sally Bedlesmith's timelines are correct, it couldn't have been the bridesmaid's dress argument that got back to the Queen because that hadn't happened yet.

32:44So here is what is said anyway. Anson is quoted saying, Meghan and William and Kate are not working well. That is what the Queen said, particularly about the two girls. It's worrying that so many people are questioning whether Meghan is right for Harry. The problem, bless his heart, is that Harry is neither bright nor strong, and she is both. So the two girls is an interesting comment, Meghan and Kate. And with a couple of these things, it reminds me a lot of some of the stuff that leaked out in the British press at the tail end of 2018. So first of all, the argument between Harry and the Queen reminds me of a story that was on the front page of The Sun by Dan Wutton in November.