While Anglophiles spent the weekend watching the third season of The Crown on Netflix, the real Prince Andrew was busy distancing himself from a more sinister style of royal drama.
In an interview about his friendship with billionaire pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, BBC’s Emily Maitlis did an excellent job pressing Andrew. Maitlis repeatedly demanded how Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s third child, could be so sure what he was doing on the night of March 10, during which he allegedly raped 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking ring.
Andrew doesn’t remember any raping, but he definitely remembers going to get pizza that night. “Going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do,” he said. “I remember it weirdly, distinctly.”
Andrew also spent 45 seconds explaining how he couldn’t have been with Giuffre, because she described him as sweating, and at that point in time, he had a medical condition in which he couldn’t sweat.
“Oh, actually? Yes,” he assures himself. “I didn’t sweat at the time.”
But, to cover his tracks in case the paparazzi catch him sweating, he explained that he can sweat now.
Andrew has no memory of the photograph of himself with Giuffre, either. And if there was any indication of Epstein’s crimes during the years in which they were friends, visiting each other at their respective swanky homes, he simply can’t remember.
“There was no indication, absolutely no indication,” Andrew said. “And if there was, you have to remember that at the time, I was the patron of the [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s] ‘Full Stop’ campaign, so I was close-up with what was going on in those — time about getting rid of abuse to children, so I knew what was, what the things were to look for but I never saw them.”
The fact that Andrew was sponsoring a campaign against child cruelty doesn’t seem like a point in his favor. It seems more like a devastating irony.
As if all of this hedging wasn’t enough to strengthen suspicion that the accusations are true, Andrew said he doesn’t regret his relationship with Epstein because of “the opportunities I was given to learn” about business. In other words, who cares if someone is a sex-trafficking pedophile if they can teach you a bit about profiting off the stock market?
The interview should be a nail in the coffin to Andrew’s apparent guilt in associating with and enabling Epstein for so many years.
“He knows exactly what he’s done,” Giuffre said before the interview. “And I hope he comes clean about it.”
Andrew hasn’t come clean about anything, but his flustered and incoherent denials speak volumes. Let’s hope we see more of Epstein’s associates — from politicians such as Bill Clinton and President Trump to media figures such as Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, and Chelsea Handler — grilled about their connections with him.
Unfortunately, Andrew’s interview only appears to have happened thanks to his publicist quitting. After this, Epstein’s powerful friends will be more careful, and no one else will be so foolish as to accidentally admit what appears to be guilt.
