Prince Harry Lawyers Up

0:00This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Prince Harry calls in lawyers over a new book, which also gives major Prince Andrew revelations, and Meghan launches her first wine. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report.

0:38Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Prince Harry's team has sent a lawyer's letter over a new biography that has been serialised in the mail on Sunday. Historian Andrew Loney has a new book out and it contains an excoriating account of Prince Andrew's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. So more on that later. The book is called Entitled. Now, I cannot overstate just how explosive, obviously, the Epstein story is for journalists in terms of attracting legal threats aimed at news organizations and reporters from all kinds of rich and powerful people. And obviously this book and this serialization, it contains so much, you know, like there's Epstein and sex trafficking and horrible, sleazy conversations between rich and powerful men and Trump and Thailand and Maxwell and masseuses.

1:31And, you know, I'll get into all of that later, including the various denials that various people have all made. but let me just tell you this as a journalist for not far off two decades it is always the thing you least expect that causes the most problems with these difficult stories always and you know i've never actually been sued um but you know people complain about stuff sometimes and the problems you see coming you usually have a chance to account for and the real landmine is always some left field element of the story that you never ever thought would be a problem and i think That really is exactly what has happened to this historian, Andrew Loney.

2:09And he reported, having written about all these billionaires with endlessly deep pockets who have been linked to Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Harry, he says, had a fistfight with Prince Andrew, who also made dismissive comments about Meghan. And this is the thing that has landed him in legal trouble. so Andrew Loney probably spent days considering whether Trump might sue him whether Maxwell might sue him or whether Andrew might sue him and you know potentially a ton of other people I mean we haven't even seen the whole book yet and I could well imagine him having been caught completely sideways by stumbling in to Prince Harry who in reality is one of the most litigious people on planet earth based on recent form you know the Sussexes between them they've sued I think I I think they've been involved in 10 lawsuits since 2019, of which one was filed by Samantha Markle against Meghan.

3:03But otherwise, they filed nine. And so, you know, the serialization dropped in the Daily Mail on Saturday. By the afternoon UK time, Harry and Meghan's team took the unusual step of issuing an on-the-record denial, fairly strongly worded. And then that night, Harry called in the couple's lawyers to send a legal letter, basically threatening legal action against the mail. As reported by Newsweek on Sunday morning. We broke the story. So what was actually published? I'm going to start actually with some bits and pieces that Harry's team have said. So here's what I was told. Such are the gross inaccuracies, damaging and defamatory remarks made in the Daily Mail story.

3:42I can confirm a legal letter from Prince Harry's counsel has been sent to the mail. That followed on that was followed on from Saturday's statement, which read, I can confirm Prince Harry and Prince Andrew have never had a physical fight, nor did Prince Andrew ever make the comments he is alleged to have made about the Duchess of Sussex to Prince Harry. Now, so what did Andrew Lonely print? What was in the book? So he wrote, at a family gathering in 2013, Harry and Andrew had got into a heated argument and punches were thrown over something Andrew said behind Harry's back. According to a source close to both men, Harry told him he was a coward not to say it to his face.

4:21Harry got the better of Andrew by all accounts, leaving him with a bloody nose before the fight was broken up. Now, bear in mind, Harry is saying that is not true. That didn't happen. So it's a full fight back against that. The book went on to say, later, Andrew told Harry, obviously years later, Harry and Meghan met in 2016. So these two incidents, you know, even if they had happened, would not have been connected. Harry's saying they literally didn't happen. So the book reads, later, Andrew told Harry, his marriage to Meghan Markle would not last more than a month and accused his nephew of going bonkers and not doing any due diligence into her past.

4:58He openly accused Meghan of being an opportunist and thought she was too old for Harry, adding that his nephew was making the biggest mistake ever. The source said Harry later told William he hated Andrew. So again, Harry's side saying that simply didn't happen. This is obviously a very interesting situation. What does it all mean. One interesting thing here is that Prince Harry has not actually launched any new lawsuits since 2022. So there was a time when it felt like he was launching a new legal action every 20 minutes. But the last one was late 2022. He sued the Daily Mail on historic allegations of phone hacking.

5:37That case, by the way, is the only one left after this rash of lawsuits. And on current appearances, it's heading for trial in the months to come. Now, it actually should be among the most interesting cases, possibly rivaled by Meghan's lawsuit which brought over the private letter she sent her father, but that's all another conversation for another time. Now, a legal letter does not actually mean Harry is definitely going to sue, but the implication clearly is that he might. He's putting the mail on notice, and presumably he's trying to get his paragraphs taken out of that story. so the mail will they'll need to go back to the sourcing obviously it's not the sources are not their sources it's Andrew Loney's sources they might have an agreement with him that in the event of a legal threat he has to cough them up I don't know exactly how this serialisation agreement was formed but they will no doubt be going back to him and checking how reliable his sources are and to my knowledge they've not backed down you know the story is by all accounts still online so we'll have to assume for now that they're going to stand by Loney's book.

6:44Which means, will Harry actually go through with it and launch his first new lawsuit in almost three years? Well, I find that hard to believe, to be honest. The strange thing to me is that, honestly, I think Harry actually comes across quite well in this story. He's obviously saying it's not true. So not true is not true. If it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But if you tell most people Harry had punched Andrew in the face, they'd probably respect that, to be honest. And I'd never advocate violence. I'm not advocating violence. but people in Britain really, really hate Prince Andrew. This is a fact that sometimes fails to translate into American discussions on the royals, particularly among the Sussex Squad and people who are fans of Harry and Meghan, who obviously really feel that, you know, Meghan gets constantly pilloried in the press and Andrew doesn't.

7:30And, you know, there is a huge amount of coverage of Harry and Meghan in the media in Britain, but, you know, that does not actually necessarily equate to strength of feeling. People sometimes think it actually doesn't. You know, this polling shows Andrew is significantly more unpopular than Harry and Meghan. In May, just 5 % of people liked Prince Andrew compared to 85 % of people who said they didn't. And Harry and Meghan, you know, obviously they've had their problems, but they're nowhere near as unpopular as that. Meghan was liked by 20 % of people and disliked by 65 % of people. Now, she's not going to be happy with those numbers, obviously, but if you bottom it out into a net approval rating, hers is minus 45 and his is minus 80.

8:19So it's a 35 point swing between them. So it's not small. So if people did obviously believe the book, which Harry's team is saying is wrong and fair enough, it may well be. but if people did believe it that Andrew had told Harry he was making a huge mistake and his wedding would only last a month, I don't actually think most people would think less of Meghan as a result of that because they don't consider Andrew to be a good judge of character. In fact that was kind of the whole point of the Newsnight interview in 2019. He was asked whether he regretted his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and said even now no because Epstein has introduced him to some prominent people who he was interested in academics and people from business and whatnot.

9:04So, you know, a man who still says that he doesn't regret his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after Jeffrey Epstein has been exposed as being, you know, one of America's most kind of notorious and prolific sexual abusers who trafficked underage girls, minors around America so that he could abuse them and destroy their lives. You know, one victim said she contemplated jumping into shark infested waters to get away from him. If Andrew still doesn't regret his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, then I think it's probably safe to say not many people are going to be taking advice from Prince Andrew about what kind of company Harry should be keeping.

9:40So then that begs the additional follow-up question, why did Harry get so upset?

9:59policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Well, I think that's complicated and a lot of it probably goes back to his personality. You know, on the one hand, he probably thinks the story is feeding his most hated newspaper because he hates the mail. You know, Harry and Meghan have sued the mail four times before. It's the only publication that I can think of that they've sued more than once. I don't think anyone else has been sued more than once. And he probably thinks the account will also feed social media trolls who constantly kind of spread hate and vitriol and gossip and rumour about Meghan.

10:41And some of the people online who hate Meghan are so obsessed and fixated that they probably would be willing to pretend for a moment that Andrew wasn't a terrible judge of character in order to peddle some new conspiracy about Meghan. But the other thing with Harry is he does just find it very angering if he sees stuff online that is wrong and he wants the world to know it's wrong. He feels like it's a huge injustice if he doesn't have the ability to tell people that it's not right. And he also feels a huge sense of injustice if he thinks that journalists, particularly journalists who he instinctively doesn't like, are getting away with something and getting away with making money out of him and out of his family.

11:20and he's hugely protective of Megan. So what about the fact he's done this? What about him complaining about the story publicly? What about him letting it be known that he sent this legal letter? Well, like I said, my gut feeling is probably that he won't actually follow through and sue, but he is putting the mail on notice that he might sue about something soon. So it's not just putting them on notice that he might sue about this and they should be careful what they publish, but it's also kind of a warning shot across the male's bowels and by inference across everybody else's that Harry isn't necessarily completely over the lawsuit because we kind of did think that he was that he'd moved on from that media strategy and was doing things differently now so he's letting it be known that his suing days aren't completely over necessarily and I don't think kicking up a stink about this will actually damage him and I often do make that kind of argument based on something called the Streisand effect.

12:22So this is a phenomenon in PR where the more you complain about something, the more attention you draw onto that thing that you're complaining about. It may be inaccurate or false or some kind of damaging allegation, whatever it may be, but the more you fight to try and destroy it, the more you just spread it far and wide. It takes back to, I think, Barbara Streisand was upset because her house had been tiny in the distance, in the background of some photo somebody had taken of a California shoreline. And so she sued. And as a result of the legal action, everybody saw the picture, or everybody saw pictures of her house or knew where her house was or something like that.

13:03She wound up making, nobody would have cared what was in the background of that photo. But then she made it incredibly widely known that her house was in it. But yeah, I mean, I don't actually think people will think any less of Harry and Meghan on the back of this. Some people might even think Harry's a legend for punching Andrew and leaving him with a bloody nose. And I mean, it sounds fairly minor anyway. Unpleasant without a shadow of a doubt. But no suggestion that he broke any bones or had to go to hospital. And so given that people hate Prince Andrew, the Streisand effect is there. yeah absolutely it potentially draws attention to that aspects of this story that relate to harry because overwhelmingly the book's not about him you know the book's not about harry making it's about prince andrew and jeffrey epstein so this does 100 act as a lightning rod that draws people away from all the stuff about you know young girls partying on yachts or being you know trafficked around the world and onto these really quite short paragraphs about Harry and Meghan.

14:10But in order for that to be a bad thing, those passages would have to be genuinely reputationally damaging to Harry and Meghan, and I just don't think they are. But also thinking about it now, I guess another reason Harry might be upset about it is that he has obviously accused Prince William of throwing him into a dog bowl. So there could be an anxiety about whether this will undermine his argument that William treated him unfairly. He might imagine that people would argue, well you complained about your brother but then you punched Prince Andrew, but my gut tells me it's not actually that. I don't think it is.

14:45I felt a lot of sympathy for Harry in relation to that particular incident. Family dramas can be very upsetting. For it to get physical is obviously going to be 100 times more upsetting, but fundamentally, neither William nor whoever side you take in that particular dog bowl, fracas, you know, neither of those people has been accused of anything that comes within a country mile of Prince Andrew's situation. My gut is telling me though, that it's not actually the alleged fight between Harry and Andrew that has caused Harry to hit the roof. Like when he says that it didn't happen, I kind of lean towards believing him, but I don't think that's what really you know lit the tinderbox for harry i think it's the bits about megan because he is hugely protective of her and obviously people on social media will always say horrible things pretty much no matter what the story is and those things upset harry and like he also feels a huge sense of help i think kind of helplessness and frustration and not being able to fight back against them but you know i just think from my point of view you know the overwhelming majority of people will just see this as a bit of messy family drama and the big neon sign that sits at the middle of this story you know the whole coverage i'm not talking about what you know these passages even that one story the actual story that these passages got published in was fundamentally making an allegation about andrew's relationship with jeffrey epstein like that was the way into the story and you know i'm going to talk more about that whole dimension in the next parts of the podcast but like it's not it's not going to drag harry and megan down in the long term and so with that in mind my gut is telling me honestly that actually you know if i was if i was giving legal advice to harry you know in britain if you sue through the british courts you do the allegation does have to meet something called the serious harm test and the passages have to cause serious harm to reputation and stuff to jeffrey epstein absolutely 100 % has the potential to cause serious harm to reputation, depending on what it is.

17:03But does punishing Andrew in the face damage your reputation? I'm not sure it does. I'm not sure it does, quite honestly. But, you know, if Harry says it's not true, he has absolutely every right to give that opinion, put that fact, if it's a fact. He has every right to respond to the story, and he has every right to say that it's false, even if it does kind of make him look good. And 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, let's talk more about this new Prince Andrew biography.

17:43It makes eye-watering reading for the royals, let me tell you.

17:52hello and welcome back to the show prince andrew reportedly had an affair with gillen maxwell at least that is according to andrew loney's new book now this is this is the book that harry sued over it's called entitled it is out this week in the uk now obviously do keep in mind with all of this stuff about andrew epstein and everybody else that prince harry has obviously denied a lot of this stuff that related to him. Now, no journalist is perfect and no historian is perfect. Also, even if Harry is right that the passages relating to him are wrong, it doesn't mean that everything else is wrong too.

18:31It is part of the nature of journalism that we almost accumulate bits and pieces of evidence, which are all part of a jigsaw puzzle. When you put them together, getting to the truth is inherently very difficult. But there is so much that's been packed into this book, so much that's quite controversial and inflammatory. There's stuff that I probably can't get into for legal reasons, sometimes because the sourcing isn't totally clear. We don't really know where Andrew Loney's got a lot of his information. Sometimes he throws quite dramatic, sweeping statements out there and doesn't really back them up.

19:08but you know here is what he said about gillen maxwell and prince andrew so he wrote andrew and glenn were good friends and over the years had been occasional lovers and through her the prince had come into the ambit of her boyfriend jeffrey epstein so basically um she kind of he kind of says that gillen maxwell reinvented prince andrew had been something of a couch potato before that point. He had gone to a very strict boarding school, Gordon Stone in Scotland. He'd come straight out of that and into the Royal Navy, which was also a very strict, structured institution where you can't just make your own decisions.

19:47And obviously he was brought up in the Royal Family, which is its own strict, structured institution. He left the Royal Navy in 2001. Andrew Loney says Prince Andrew was rudderless at the time. And then Maxwell kind of scoops him up, changed his wardrobe, had him dressing like a 25-year-old, they said, in a blazer and blue jeans. That sounds awful to me. I hate blazers paired with blue jeans, but there you go. Maybe that's just me. Also, Andrew Loney says it was a lucrative relationship between them that helped Gill and Maxwell secure some lucrative business deals. The book says that Andrew appeared to be rediscovering his youth hooked by the wealth and reach of new friends.

20:33He's spiralling out of control, a friend said. He's even started dressing like a 25-year-old in jeans and a blazer. This lifestyle, according to Loney, could be traced back to his closer relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. She introduced him to many of the women with whom he had brief flings, but she also drew him further into Epstein's net. So there's talk about Cynthia Matthews, a friend of Maxwell's telling Andrew Loney that the prince and Maxwell worked in these foreign business ventures together. There was a hugely lucrative tobacco deal in Malawi and a luxury vehicle deal in Thailand that Andrew had helped with.

21:13And he loved Thailand and spent a lot of time there. In 2000, according to the book, he resumed his on-off affair with Geren. In May, they were spotted holding hands at a restaurant in Manhattan before flying to Miami with model Naomi Campbell and Parisian art dealer Alexia Wellert on the Lidita Express as Epstein's plane was known for flying so many young girls. Now, so a little bit of background on the whole kind of saga. Like it always feels to me like everybody knows all of this, but that's probably partly because I've been writing about it for so many years. Not everybody perhaps does. So just to give the kind of quick rundown, obviously, most people do know Jeffrey Epstein was a serial abuser of minors who he hired as massage therapists, and then he kind of groomed them to turn the relationship sexual.

22:09Many of them were underage, not all of them, and he destroyed their lives. Essentially, Ghislaine Maxwell was jailed for 20 years in 2022, She was Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, but also perhaps more importantly, she played a major role in grooming these girls. She kind of recruited many of them in the first place, brought them into Epstein's world as masseuses. And then she even helped Epstein to graduate from a massage into a sexual encounter, for example, by being naked herself in one instance. um andrew had always said that he you know he was less friends of epstein he was more friends of gillen maxwell gillen maxwell was really his friend um but he did also describe during his big famous 2019 bbc interview he did not he described gillen maxwell as epstein's girlfriend he never described gillen maxwell as his own girlfriend um now andrew doesn't tend to comment on things so we can only imagine what he would say about this book.

23:13But here's something that he said to the BBC in 2019. Well, I met Epstein through his girlfriend back in 1999, and I'd known her since she was at university in the UK, and it would be, to some extent, a stretch to say that, as it were, we were close friends. I mean, we were friends because of other people, and I had a lot of opportunity to go to the United States, but I didn't have much time with him. I suppose I saw him once or twice a year, perhaps maybe a maximum of three times a year and quite often i was in the united states and doing things and if he wasn't there he would say well why don't you come and use my houses and so he really kind of lends on this idea that actually his friendship was with maxwell and not with epstein but virginia jeffrey who was a well actually andrew wound up accepting in a public statement that she was a jeffrey epstein sex trafficking victim virginia jeffrey said that she was trafficked to London in order to have sex with Andrew and feared for her safety, feared for her life if she refused.

24:15She said she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell. She said she did have sex with Andrew and then again in New York and the US Virgin Islands. She filed a civil lawsuit against Andrew. He settled out of court for an undisclosed sum without admitting liability. so um you know there's a lot of interesting stuff here it is very very lurid um it's all been published all over the mail and then the mail on sunday the following day there's a quote here from some friends in april that year epstein threw a dinner for andrew at his manhattan house the following month so this is in 1999 um according to miles and kathy alexander a south African couple hired to manage Epstein's Caribbean property.

25:02The Duke came to the private island via helicopter with his bodyguard and a woman in her 30s who said she was a brain surgeon. She was a tall, bleached blonde and had big boobs. This is all in quotes. They shared a room and spent their time windsurfing, sailing and other water sports. One day he came back into the house in great mirth claiming his guest had stepped on a sea urchin and he urinated on her foot as a remedy. The royal member has done its duty. Andrew chuckled. So some stuff is low level like that. And it's just Andrew being a kind of boorish, slightly obnoxious buffoon. But then, you know, there's other more serious things.

25:41There's a quote from Jeffrey Epstein saying that Andrew was sex obsessed, the only other person as sex obsessed as him and into kink. And, you know, various other things like that it is very difficult because andrew loney in the serialized version in the mail doesn't say he doesn't really give any information about where that quote came from and sometimes the serialization process the newspapers take out a lot of the stuff that's in the book because they're trying to compress a whole book down into a handful of hits in a newspaper so maybe there's more detail in the actual book which we'll hopefully get to see in course.

26:18But it would be really helpful, honestly, to at least have some kind of a ballpark for where like some of this extraordinary stuff came from, especially if newspapers are going to pick it up and follow it. But, you know, there's a quote from Epstein's personal driver, Ivan Novikov, who says, whenever Andrew was in town, I'd be picking up young girls who were essentially prostitutes. One time I drove him and two young girls aged around 18 to a hotel, both, yeah, It says Prince Andrew was making out with one of them. Then there's Epstein's longtime housekeeper, Deborah Gale, who worked on the island and in Florida, called the Duke a mainstay at the Palm Beach house.

26:59I once found sex toys on the floor of his room and women's panties in the bed, she says. So, you know, it's a lot of that kind of stuff. you know really with this I will go back to I think what I've always said about it which is actually there's quite a lot of evidence against Andrew which is why it's so regrettable that he was never charged in Britain I think the Metropolitan Police were very naive to decide that it had to be America where he was charged obviously extraditing a prince Queen Elizabeth the second's favourite son from Britain to America is going to be an absolute nightmare to do and so So the Met Police deciding that it wasn't their jurisdiction completely killed that stone dead, really.

27:43And actually, you know, the central allegation that has the most evidence around it did take place in London. So they really actually definitely could have charged and prosecuted jurisdictionally in London. All of this stuff, like it does, like this book is going to add a lot of detail to what we already knew. It's going to feel like the allegations that Virginia Jeffery made, she didn't make a loan and that they sit within a much broader account by many, many, many people of a pattern of behavior by Prince Andrew. But ultimately, in legal terms, the allegations are still what they always were, which is Virginia Jeffery's allegation that she, as a 17 year old girl, was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to London to have sex with Andrew.

28:31and feared for her safety if she refused. Obviously that, you know, Virginia very, very sadly has passed away. Her family said she took her own life. Some family members seem to dispute that and we will look out for movement on that issue. But with Virginia no longer with us, it's very, very unlikely if there ever was any prospect of this ever being tested in court. But equally, you know, Andrew is just such a horrendously unpopular man, horrendously unpopular, that he kind of virtually has no real reputation to defend anymore. You know, liked by 5 % of Britain really does, I think, say it all.

29:18I should say actually Andrew Loney the author responded to Newsweek's story to our story on Twitter saying you know if Harry's going to sue him then bring it on and if the case if Harry does and the case goes to court Andrew Loney says he's looking forward to the disclosure so if that happened I mean I don't know how much of it would relate to Epstein but it might put new information about Andrew into the public domain in a very reportable context because you know journalists are free to report on matters in open court, matters discussed in open court in Britain. Right, I'm going to take one more quick break.

29:52But before I do, a reminder to follow me on X. I'm at Jack underscore Royston. You will find all my latest stories for Newsweek. When I'm back, Meghan Markle is releasing more wine with all eyes on how fast the latest vintage will sell out.