The woman who says she was forced to have underage sex with Prince Andrew after being recruited by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein wants her attorneys to interview the royal.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre also pushed back on Andrew’s claim the photo of the two of them and Epstein’s sometime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was “fake” in a letter sent by her attorneys to the Duke of York.
Andrew denied Giuffre’s accusations and tried distancing himself from Epstein, his longtime friend, in the wake of the accused child sex trafficker’s apparent suicide at age 66 in his Manhattan, New York, prison cell in August.
The 59-year-old royal denied any knowledge of the jet-setting financier’s crimes, and alleged sources close to the prince told British newspapers that Giuffre’s story couldn’t be true and that a smiling picture of Andrew with his arm wrapped around Giuffre with British socialite Maxwell, 57, in the background was faked.
Giuffre’s lawyers said they are “prepared to host a meeting with you in New York” or “will gladly come to London or to any other place you may designate” in order to address all these issues with Andrew face to face. They noted Andrew rebuffed their prior efforts to meet with him about his relationship with Epstein.
“While your recent press statements indicate your sincere desire to help the victims of sexual abuse, we are concerned that certain statements attributed to you (which we hope do not reflect your actual views) are quite inconsistent with a desire to deal responsibly with the serious allegations that have been made,” the attorneys told Andrew. “We now see, for instance, a troubling assertion attributed to you that a well-documented photograph depicting you, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell in each other’s company is a fake.”
Last week, the Evening Standard reported sources close to Andrew denied Giuffre’s story about being abused by him in London when she was 17 years old, claiming the duke is adamant he does not remember meeting Giuffre or the photo being taken and pointing to the duke’s hands and relative heights of him and Giuffre as indications the photo was faked.
Giuffre’s lawyers stood by the veracity of the photograph.
“As you know, counsel in related litigation delivered correspondence to you years ago asking for an opportunity to discuss the circumstances surrounding this long-held photograph,” Giuffre’s lawyers wrote. “We were puzzled and, we must admit, disappointed that you did not cooperate at that time. Nevertheless, given your new attention to the subject and your pledge to cooperate, we renew our request for your cooperation.”
Giuffre’s lawyers said they’d continue exploring the relationship between Andrew, Epstein, and Maxwell.
“He knows exactly what he’s done,” Giuffre said of Andrew from the steps of a Manhattan courthouse last month. “And I hope he comes clean about it.”
In August, Andrew said he was “at a loss to be able to understand or explain” his dead friend’s “lifestyle.” The royal downplayed his closeness with Epstein, referring to their relationship as a “former association or friendship.” He claimed to be in the dark about any of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes involving underage girls, despite a friendship spanning over a decade, repeated visits to and stays at Epstein’s various homes, and flights on Epstein’s planes.
Andrew has said he met Epstein in 1999 and claimed he saw Epstein infrequently, “probably no more than only once or twice a year.” It was, he added, “a mistake and an error” to visit him in 2010 after his sex conviction.
But the claims of short and infrequent visits are contradicted by Andrew’s lengthy stays at Epstein’s homes. Andrew spent multiple days on Epstein’s private island in February 1999, and in 2000, the two saw each other nearly a half a dozen times or more in the United Kingdom and the United States, with Andrew reportedly staying at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion multiple times. And while Andrew acknowledged he stayed in “a number” of Epstein’s residences, he didn’t mention he’d invited Epstein to royal residences such as Windsor Castle, Sandringham Estate, and Balmoral Castle.
Thousands of pages of documents from Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit against Maxwell were released in August, and thousands more may be unsealed by a federal judge soon.
It’s not clear if Andrew is under investigation or if Maxwell will be charged. Attorney General William Barr has said that the investigation into Epstein’s alleged international sex trafficking conspiracy will continue and that any co-conspirators “should not rest easy.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s suicide by hanging, and Democrats have called upon Barr to expand that to a wider inquiry into the sweetheart deal Epstein originally received from DOJ back in 2008, over a decade before he was arrested again.
