Will Andrew Mountbatten Windsor Testify?

0:01Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is summoned to testify, Meghan Markle returns to acting, and Prince George George steps in for William at a remembrance event. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Now, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been asked to testify in person by the House Oversight Committee of Congress, which poses major reputational questions for both Andrew himself and the monarchy. Now, I'm talking when I say Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Of course, I mean the Andrew formerly known as Prince, who's been stripped of all his titles.

0:40And, you know, this was by the king. And just when the monarchy thought that they had got it back under control, no doubt, looked like they had the situation back under control. Congress wants Andrew to fly all the way over to Washington to give evidence in person about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. And obviously, most listeners will not need me to tell them what kind of an interview process that would be. It would be an absolute grilling by American lawmakers of Andrew about, you know, on the basis that they would be telling him that he had, in fact, abused Epstein victims. But I will go through in a minute the actual wording of the letter because it is made pretty crystal clear in the letter itself that that's the intention.

1:25So I'll go through all of that in a minute. And really, though, there's another core question. So there are two massive questions. One is, will Andrew go? The short answer to that question is, it's exceptionally unlikely, but I'll unpack that a bit more later. So the other question is, if Andrew doesn't go, what does that mean for the monarchy? And what does that mean for Charles? And if Andrew just stonewalls them and refuses, will they give up? Will they back down? Or will they keep piling more and more pressure on? And what avenues do they have available to them to do that? So before we get into all of that major stuff, let's actually look at the wording of the letter itself, which, like I said, makes it really clear that the process is going to be excoriating for Andrew, if he ever does go out there.

2:11So the letter read, the committee is seeking to uncover the identities of Mr. Epstein's co-conspirators and enablers and to understand the full extent of his criminal operations. Well-documented allegations against you, along with your longstanding friendship with Mr. Epstein, indicate that you may possess knowledge of his activities relevant to our investigation. In the interests of justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, requests that you cooperate with the committee's investigation by sitting for a transcribed interview with the committee. And then significantly, it adds that financial records such as Massage for Andrew raise serious questions.

2:53And that is, of course, a reference to a document that the House Oversight Committee actually unsealed and put out into the public domain, which showed that Andrew appeared to have paid for several massages with Epstein and paid$200, which is a really significant sum of money because$200 is what some of the Epstein victims actually said they got paid for giving these kind of sexual massages that they'd been groomed into giving by Epstein. Not only that, but there was one, in black and white on paper, it said that Andrew had a$200 payment cost to an Andrew, which was for yoga, exercise and massage.

3:34Now, I actually happened to be doing something, a TV thing with somebody who worked at the palace not long after this. And, you know, I said, like, did you have you ever been aware of Andrew doing yoga? Andrew is not a yoga kind of guy. And I certainly didn't get confirmation that he had a secret yoga habit. Let's put it that way. So, you know, that email or that documentation when it came out was massive and really cast major doubt on Andrew's accounts of it all being made up and all being lies. So this is what they want to grill him about. They want to get him out there, sit him in the chair and then ask him really detailed questions, go through everything he's said about this line by line and pull him to pieces, basically pull apart the seams in front of cameras, you know, for the spectacle of the public.

4:22But also, you know, I'm not being cynical when I say that for justice for Epstein's victims and also to no doubt try to kind of blow away, blow to pieces this memo from July from the FBI and the DOJ, which said that there were no Epstein co-conspirators. That is what the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee really are trying to do here, is they're trying to blow apart the FBI and DOJ memo, which kind of set this issue on fire back in July, in which it said that there was no blackmail plot and there were no co-conspirators and there was no Epstein client list. So that's what's at stake. And, you know, again, that was an extract from the letter, but there's another bit as well.

5:06Representative Robert Garcia, who's the ranking Democrat on the committee and the Democrats on the committee have been driving this. And he said, rich and powerful men have evaded justice for far too long. Now, former Prince Andrew has the opportunity to come clean and provide justice for the survivors. And just a little bit of reaction, the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was asked about this. And he said it's a matter for him, which kind of gives an indication that he's not going to try to in any way force Andrew to go over and testify. But at the same time, he did also dial up the pressure by saying, at my view, and this is not about the individual case, more broadly is that anybody who has relevant information should always be willing to give it to whatever inquiries need that information.

5:52So Starmer hedging his bets a little bit, but this is just much more kind of confrontational than we're accustomed to British politicians being in Britain. They usually bat away questions about the royals and say they keep the bit that says it's a matter for them, it's a matter for the palace, we let the monarchy sort it out. But beyond that, they don't tend to sort of start suggesting actively that people should go and give evidence to Congress, you know, to the legislator of an overseas country. You know, it's just not something that we're used to in Britain. So I do think that there are still signs that there's been a marked change in the political culture in Britain relating to the monarchy.

6:30It's subtle and it might go away with time, But we are in uncharted territory up to a point. So that was, you know, a pretty major reaction. But like I said, there are two major questions here. The first is, will Andrew actually go? Now, obviously, we know how he performed on BBC Newsnight. And he went, that was back in 2019, he did a sit-down interview with Emily Maitlis. The idea was to clear his name and his explanations and his kind of efforts to rebut the allegations and to clear his name and explain himself were considered so farcical by the British public that it actually led to him being forced to step back from public life.

7:11That was the end of his career as a working royal. So even though he came out of that interview actually feeling like he'd aced it, which we know because Emily Maitlis, the interviewer, has said, that's what it was actually said to them, that he thought he'd done really well. But we now know that he didn't. but also he will know now that he went down terribly and he thought that he was going down brilliantly, but he went down terribly. So even he will not be able to hide away from that reality. So the chances of him agreeing to this voluntarily are incredibly minuscule. But that raises a secondary question is what will that mean for the monarchy?

7:49You know, what will that mean for King Charles? Has King Charles done enough to protect him from the Andrew scandal? Well, one of the things that the king's done is in order to get Andrew out of Royal Lodge, Charles has moved Andrew into Sandring. He's moved him to a property on the Sandring Estate where Charles is effectively putting him up and is going to be offering him some financial support, we understand as well. So that means Charles hasn't completely created a clean break with Andrew. And it risks the situation that existed way back in 2021 so when virginia jeffrey was still alive um she filed a lawsuit a civil lawsuit against andrew in new york um and they her lawyers needed to physically file papers with him they needed to serve him in person you know in the old-fashioned way and so they were trying to do that and they couldn't get anywhere near him because of the private security at royal lodge but also andrew then traveled up to scotland to stay at balmoral with the queen and so they were trying to surf in papers and he was literally hiding out in the queen's private estate in a place where they could not reach him and it created this framing that is still people talk about that the monarchy was shielding andrew from justice and the people still say this kind of thing to me all the time they say you know when are the royals just going to hand andrew over to the police and now if the royals tried to do that you know the police in britain have said they're not investigating this they've reviewed it again and again and they've not chosen to launch a formal investigation into Virginia's allegations.

9:22They are currently deciding whether to investigate a related issue to do with an email that Andrew sent, confirming he'd asked a police protection officer to dig up dirt on Virginia. So that is another matter that could lead to a criminal prosecution. We don't know yet, but it could do. But they have reviewed Virginia's allegations multiple times and said that they're not investigating because they think it would be based too much on relationships that exist outside of Britain, i.e. it's for the FBI to deal with. Now, this is, the framing would be exactly the same, basically. You know, if the oversight committee are able to keep this in the news and able to hammer this again and again and again and turn up the pressure, then what you risk is the same situation where the public know that Andrew's hiding out at Sandringham on the King's estate rather than go over to America to testify to Congress.

10:22So that creates another question, which is, can the Oversight Committee do that? Can they keep this in the news? Can they hammer this again and again? Will they ratchet up the pressure? Well, there is another avenue they could go down. So far, all they've actually done is send this letter to Andrew, suggest to Andrew at Mountbatten, Windsor, or Royal Lodge, Windsor, and it gives the postcode and everything. Who knows whether it will get there or not. even if it gets there, there's every probability Andrew won't even read it. But the other thing they could attempt to do is they could try to get a subpoena.

10:53They tried to actually subpoena Andrew. Now if they do that that subpoena would not have any legal effect in Britain because Britain's outside the jurisdiction. So even then they wouldn't be able to but that would raise it a notch again. It would put it back into the news again. Now the Democrats on the Oversight Committee, if they were going to do that, they would need the support of their Republican colleagues. They wouldn't have the numbers by themselves. Who knows, though? Maybe they might get that support. It's not impossible. And so what Charles needs to think about, he needs to plan in advance if this does flare again, if the crisis descends again, and this starts really impacting him, and not just Andrew, but the king.

11:37And if people feel that the king is shielding Andrew from justice, what is he going to do? Now, there are other options still available to him. He might not necessarily like them. They might be a little bit awkward. But this issue that the police are currently looking at about whether Andrew committed an offence of misconduct in a public office by asking an on-duty police protection officer to dig up dirt on Virginia Jeffrey. now that could prove an avenue available to the monarchy which is that they could bring in an outside legal team to review all the emails connected to that or review andrew's emails in totality as well that's another option and then allow that outside legal firm outside law firm to decide what gets handed over to the police this would mirror something that the that rupert Murdoch's UK-based media empire did in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal.

12:32So for those too young to remember, tabloid journalists in Britain had been snooping on people's answer phone messages. There was this system where if you call their phone and you get the answer phone message, then if you punch in a code, then you can listen to somebody else's answer phone messages remotely. And so they've been using this, either guessing the codes or using the factory reset code to access celebrity voicemail messages and then writing news stories about the content. Then it got out that this was happening, not just, it started with the Royals, with Prince William brought a case, but then it spreads not just to celebrities, but also there was a victim, a young teenage female victim of a serial killer whose answering messages were listened to.

13:13So it turned into a massive scandal. And what News UK wound up doing was bringing an outside law firm to review like thousands of emails and decide which of those emails should be handed over to the police. Now they became, the people involved in this whole maneuvering became enemies within the, you know, like the rank and file on the Murdoch newspapers, hated the people who were responsible for this decision. And they felt that they'd been thrown to the wall. So no doubt Andrew would feel exactly the same way about Charles, but needless to say, it would be an opportunity for Charles to kind of show the British public that he's not shielding Andrew from justice.

13:51And that if the police aren't prosecuting Andrew, it's not because the monarchy are telling them not to. That's the key thing is it's very easy to understand why people in the back of their minds think that the police just simply will never prosecute a royal family member because we had a police investigation into allegations at one of Charles's charities at the King's Foundation, where the former chief executive Michael Fawcett was accused of making an offer to aid to a Saudi billionaire to basically help secure a knighthood and citizenship in exchange for donations to the charity. And that, you know, the police went through this process of a kind of pre-investigation, and then it ran and ran and ran for years.

14:35And then Charles became king. And that meant, you know, the king can never be prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service. The king can only be prosecuted in Britain. Even if the king has committed a crime, the king could only be prosecuted by parliament, not through the normal process where you go before the courts because the king is the kind of effective head of the Crown Prosecution Service. All prosecutions are brought in the name of the monarch. And then the whole thing just fizzled out. There was an email on record in black and white in which Michael Fawcett was saying, thank you for your generous offers and we can help with the knighthood and citizenship in light of your generosity.

15:19So the fact that that did not lead to any kind of prosecution will tell some people that it's like establishment corruption, it's institutional corruption baked into the British system and that the police will quite simply never prosecute a royal or never prosecute the monarchy. so one way that Charles could try to kind of cut the wires on that particular unexploded bomb is to just give over evidence to the police and let it be known that this has happened because they can show them we are cooperating, we're not trying to shield him from justice, it's not the monarchy's responsibility to determine whether anybody is guilty of a crime, that's for the police to investigate, it's not for the monarchy to determine whether a prosecution should be brought, but the monarchy does have evidence that is material to that police investigation.

16:12And it is up to the palace and the institution of monarchy to decide whether to pass over the originals of the emails that were included in the media coverage about Andrew asking this PPO to try and track down a criminal record for Virginia Jeffrey in America. So if they make it clear publicly that they are actively cooperating with that police investigation, And that could go some way to persuading the British public that actually they are serious about doing something about this and they don't think that anybody is above the law and they're not trying to protect Andrew from justice. So that is an option they could go down.

16:48But, you know, nobody can make Andrew go to America and testify. He could try. He is very, very unlikely to want to travel to America. He could, if he wanted to do something, try to negotiate with the committee to see if he could give evidence remotely from Britain via video link, which is not how they normally do it. But it's also not impossible. So that is an option that he could go down. But it's I think the overwhelming likelihood is that Andrew just stonewalls and tries to ignore it and pretend it isn't happening. And because that is the path of least resistance for him, you know, that is the easiest thing to do.

17:24and it's you know people in situations like andrew have a tendency to just do the easy thing he knows it's over that he isn't coming back and so now he has absolutely nothing to gain because no matter what he does he is never coming back um but there is still further that he could fall if he incriminates himself and winds up getting himself arrested or prosecuted so he that will be his number one only concern um i was actually chatting to a lawyer who i respect i'll tell you in a minute what he told me. But he was saying, you know, Andrew's legal advisors will be telling him, let me tell you, Andrew does not have legal advisors anymore.

18:02Like this is how far he's sunk. He doesn't have press offices. He doesn't have legal advisors. It's just him. And occasionally, you know, the palace press office or, you know, the palace will deal with him, you know, in moments while the whole of the rest of the year, they will claim that they have nothing to do with him and don't represent him. Every now and again, they will release a statement on his behalf, which they did mid-October. The statement in which Andrew voluntarily gave up the use of his titles was issued by Buckingham Palace press office, even though they always tell us they don't represent him anymore.

18:32So Andrew only stands to lose from this whole process. And for that reason, I think he won't do it. But the king needs to give really serious consideration to what that means for the monarchy and how to protect the reputation of the institution of monarchy. So I wanted to also ask a couple of people for their opinions. And so I spoke to Andrew Loney, a former guest on this podcast who wrote the book entitled The Biography of Andrew. Now, he knows an awful lot about Andrew's life, where he's come from and how it all went wrong. And this is what he told me. This doesn't surprise me because I know there have been investigations going on in the States for some time which have been reopened.

19:09This is a welcome development and it's important that we get to the bottom of what's actually going on, what has actually happened, because it shows there will be no fear or favour for Andrew in the future. So that's Andrew Loney, the author of the Prince Andrew biography entitled. And then I also had a chat with the lawyer Nima Romani, who gave me a good indication of what he thinks could be available to the House Oversight Committee if they do want to keep pushing this back into the public domain again and again and again. Now, Nima Romani is the president of the law firm West Coast Trial Lawyers in Los Angeles.

19:44And he says he doesn't see Andrew testifying because basically the letter means nothing and there's zero chance that Andrew will give into it. So he says they can subpoena him but they would need Republican support. I think they would get it but it is not enforceable. The UK is not going to extradite him. He'll never show up in the United States. That would be incredibly reckless and foolish. So, you know, I think Neiman could not really have come down harder on the side of it's never going to happen than that. And I have to say I agree. I mean, you've just got to think people don't do things if there's nothing in it for them and there's really nothing in this for andrew but that's the interesting thing about it is that there really is something in it for the king at least it doesn't have to be the house oversight committee it could be this police investigation but if there's various kind of swings at andrew that are missing every time then there is this danger that the public starts to feel again like it's all an establishment stitch up and that it's all the monarchy shielding andrew from justice and that is the danger here Right, on that note, I'm going to take a quick break.

20:48But before I do, a reminder to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows. And of course, subscribe on YouTube if you've been watching us in video form. And when I'm back, Meghan Markle has been photographed on set as she returns to acting.

21:10Hello and welcome back to the show. Now, Meghan Markle is returning to acting for now, at least. She was photographed leaving the set of a film Close Personal Friends on Wednesday, November the 5th. Filming was in Pasadena and it is an Amazon MGM production. She's reportedly going to be playing herself. and the film includes the co-stars Lily Collins, Brie Larson, Jack Quaid and the British actor Henry Golding. Now, interestingly, this all came out because of A Story in the Sun, which is a British tabloid newspaper owned historically by Rupert Murdoch, not one of their favourites. Harry sued them not very long ago.

21:47So this is a bit of a scoop for them. They quoted an anonymous studio source, but obviously the story is true because the pictures emerged later in the day showing that this was in fact correct. So this is what the studio source told The Sun. This is a massive moment for Megan and signifies a return to doing what she truly loves. She has been swamped with offers, but this one felt right. It is Megan's way of gently putting her toe back in the water and seeing how she enjoys being back on set. That's an interesting line, by the way. Hold that in your thoughts, because that does sound a little bit like she's thinking of going back more permanently, but wants to just see how things are.

22:26everyone involved is super excited and have been sworn to secrecy about her involvement so it's interesting stuff she says or the source says rather Prince Harry is of course really supportive and quite simply wants Meghan to do whatever brings her joy yeah I mean look it's a great thing to go back to acting I never understood why she didn't go back straight away I never understood why she didn't just simply become an actress again. I think that's what everybody expected her to do. At the time that Meghan married her, well, before even the wedding, in the months before the wedding she was made to quit suits.

23:06She had to leave suits in order to marry Harry. She felt anyway she had to shut down that part of her life. At the time we all felt that this was a shame and that Meghan probably wouldn't want to. Then later in Harry's book it emerged that actually, or actually I think it was one of his interviews, he said as though it was a kind of terrible thing you know this is back when the family was still talking about her continuing her career in acting and saying there wasn't money to pay for her um so it was you know it's really interesting thing if they didn't like life within the palace but also they were really offended by the king stop or the queen you know the institution of the monarchy stopping you know stopping megan from doing various things she was doing like writing her blog the tig but then And they also were offended by them wanting to Megan to act still.

23:58So it's kind of a little bit of a case of, I suppose, have your cake and eat it too. But here she's going back to it. You know, we thought when she quit Britain, when she quit the palace, that she would be straight back into acting and then she didn't want to do it. But the other things that have been tried have not been necessarily hugely successful. And they did go into being TV producers. So it's always been something that was kind of glaringly obvious. I mean, I've said before on this podcast that I thought she should go back to suits. And I still, to this day, do not understand why she didn't just go back to suits, even from one series or even like a one off show.

24:33And they would build it, I'm sure, all around her. And she could have just reprised her role as Rachel Zane. And, you know, she would probably have had fun. It might have been intense. I think perhaps partly that was some of her reticence is the intensity of filming pulls you out of family life. and then 2021 she gave birth to her second child so that was one year into their new lives in America 2020 you know Archie was still very young so maybe she's just out the other side of that early parenting period kids you know starting at school I mean what is Lily now for um so she's nearly there not quite there really but getting there um but yeah I mean this is for me it's been staring them in the face for years and she should have done it a long time ago so if she is dipping her toe in the water and waiting and kind of seeing how she finds the experience of that kind of pace of filming before she um before she makes a concrete decision about whether to properly return to acting then i can only say you know i hope it goes well because i think it could be interesting for her to start taking on some kind of proper projects um where you know it's not all this is partly the problem with the netflix series with them with love megan her lifestyle show is there was just so much pressure on her to like just invent this scintillating on-screen personality.

25:49Whereas that was actually not originally what she did as an actress, which is an actress would learn the script and play the part that she'd been given by somebody else. You know, a film and a TV show is a collaborative process where the character is brought to life partly by the actor who's on screen, but also substantially by the writers and, you know, the kind of people who invent the world of the show. so if she can find herself roles in things where it's not all on her shoulders and she doesn't have to single-handedly make something happen and be excentllating enough personality to carry a show that kind of doesn't make sense in the modern world then i think things will probably go much better for her but then the other question is will she feel it's too much pressure on family life i think personally she should probably take that hit but you've got remember this is the same megan who didn't want to film her cooking show in her own house because she didn't want the TV crew disrupting family life.

26:47So, yeah, I mean, she might... She's not somebody who likes to compromise, let's put it that way. And so we'll have to see whether she thinks it's too much pressure. But let's talk a little bit about what the film is actually going to be. It apparently centres on... This is from The Hollywood Reporter. It centres on one couple that meets and befriends a celebrity couple, while on a trip to Santa Barbara. So obviously Harry and Meghan living in Montecito in the county of Santa Barbara. Personal lines get crossed, among other things, and awkward hilarities ensue. So I would imagine Meghan is being filed under awkward hilarities here and she's somebody who pops up because she lives in Montecito and will be like a friend of the celebrity couple in the film.

27:32But I hope she gets like a decent sized part and it's not just like walk on, walk off. because I think what would be much more interesting, from my point of view, maybe not the viewers to the film, who knows, but from my point of view, I'd like to see whether she actually can carry a role still or whether it's just been so long that she's kind of forgotten how to ride the bike, so to speak. And then, yeah, you know, there is potential for her to be doing much, much, much more interesting stuff if she can simply be cast as an actress in somebody else's project compared to the Netflix stuff they've been putting out.

28:07You know, Polo was very vanilla and it was probably actually the spiciest of the post after the first Netflix docuseries that contained all the royal bombshells. Polo was probably the spiciest of the whole thing and it was still pretty vanilla. So, yeah, it opens up an avenue for her to basically be a cog in a wheel and hopefully, you know, everybody else who is lifting, who is creating an interesting world, interesting conflicts, interesting characters, interesting dynamics between those characters will help lift the whole piece so that she can star in something people love because people do love Suits and they love her character in Suits.

28:50They love the role she played in Suits. So it's possible, it can be done, but she needs to get out of spaces where all the pressure is on her to be the star. you know she's got to share that pressure share the load across more shoulders i'm going to take one more quick break but before i do a reminder to follow me on x formerly twitter i'm at jack underscore royston and you will find all my latest stories for newsweek when i'm back prince william has been in brazil for the earthshot prize and that means prince george has had a rare outing in the evening with his mum for a remembrance event