This is the kind of detail Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson never wanted us to see. It’s embarrassing and exposing.
We’ve known for some time about the closeness between the Yorks and Jeffrey Epstein but if genuine these emails give us a new level of insight, about their interactions with the convicted paedophile, what they shared with him and just how much they saw him as a friend and close confidante.
From the emails we can see he was apparently welcomed into the fold and the inner sanctum of their palace life. Offered the chance to come into Buckingham Palace in September 2010, invited to Andrew’s birthday party at St James’s Palace in February 2010, all after his conviction for soliciting prostitution in 2008 and his release in 2009.
From the discussions about him lending them money and the exchanges about Andrew being set up with women, you can see he was clearly trusted with their innermost secrets.
Epstein files latest: More than three million pages being released
It is the obsequious tone with which they write to him which will inevitably anger the victims. It feels like Andrew and Sarah were dependent on him, whether for money or contacts.
It appears Epstein had made it that way, made himself invaluable to them, which chimes with Sarah Ferguson’s claim last year that she had to appear loyal because he was blackmailing her.
Date of the emails is key
But away from what’s written in the emails, it’s when they were written that is also exposing. Just look at the dates and they appear to challenge Andrew and Sarah’s recollections of when they apparently tried to cut ties with Epstein.
In June 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to those paedophile charges, he was then released in July 2009. Yet all the email correspondence we see in this latest release of files was sent after they would have known the crimes he’d admitted. Just a month after Epstein was released Sarah Ferguson sent the email describing him as the “brother she always wished for”.
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Andrew claimed in that Newsnight interview that they were photographed together in Central Park in December 2010 because he was trying to honourably end their relationship, and yet in February 2011, they were exchanging emails which appear to suggest Epstein was helping the Yorks with money.
It is important to say that the documents don’t expose any new accusations of wrongdoing, to this day Andrew has vehemently denied all the allegations against him; the Metropolitan Police also said last year they don’t intend to look any further at the suggestions he asked his close protection officer to dig dirt on his accuser Virginia Giuffre.
Difficult reading for Royal Family
But that doesn’t stop this again being really difficult reading for the rest of the Royal Family, further ramping up the scrutiny around Andrew. It will also no doubt embolden those who have called for Andrew to tell-all, whether it’s Epstein’s victims or the US congress committee who invited him to speak to them about what he knew and what he saw.
It has to be pointed out that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson are inevitably at the top of everyone’s search list. It means that we are inevitably going to report more on documents related to them, and with other high-profile individuals also linked to Epstein they will no doubt find that unfair.
But as the brother and ex-sister-in-law of the King it is right that we should be able to question and probe how close they were, these documents giving us again that opportunity, and a level of insight we never expected.
Sky News has approached Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson for comment.
