Dear Gossips,
It’s been 72 hours since Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in federal detention. Yesterday the FBI raided his private island in the Caribbean as authorities promised his victims that the case would continue even though he’s dead. Which means anyone who was worried about their association with him is probably still worried.
Writer James B Stewart wrote about meeting with Jeffrey Epstein almost exactly a year ago in The New York Times. He was chasing a tip that Epstein was working with Elon Musk and Tesla. Elon and Tesla are denying this. During the conversation, Epstein apparently told Stewart that “criminalizing sex with teenage girls was a cultural aberration and that at times in history it was perfectly acceptable”. Charming. He invited Stewart to have dinner with Woody Allen and Steve Bannon (separately) and “knew an astonishing number of rich, famous and powerful people, and had photos to prove it. He also claimed to know a great deal about these people, some of it potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.”
The “astonishing number of rich, famous, and powerful people” Jeffrey Epstein knew includes Prince Andrew. Buckingham Palace has vehemently and repeatedly denied that the Duke of York had anything to do with Epstein’s alleged grossness but per The Guardian:
Records detailing flights by Epstein’s private Gulfstream jet, previously seen by the Guardian, reveal that in May 2000 Andrew flew with Epstein and Maxwell to Palm Beach, Florida. The next month, Epstein and Maxwell are believed to have attended a Windsor Castle party for the birthdays of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Princess Margaret.
In 2000, the prince is reported to have shared a holiday with Epstein on his yacht in Thailand. Other encounters between the two men are believed to have taken place at the Queen’s Norfolk estate and an exclusive dinner in St Tropez. The pair were most recently pictured walking together in New York’s Central Park in 2011, shortly after Epstein, by then a registered sex offender, was released from jail.
Say what now? Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his alleged madam, may have attended a party at WINDSOR CASTLE!? Like the Queen’s favourite residence?!?
And …wait, wait, wait… Epstein was also apparently hanging out with Andrew at Her Majesty’s Norfolk estate?
Remember when Meghan Markle’s friends organised a baby shower in New York, to celebrate the birth of her first child, an event that was not cloaked in secrecy and/or grossness and they dragged her back across the Atlantic for the crime and misdemeanor of having famous friends who are excited about her having a baby?
Well Prince Andrew may have brought a convicted sex offender onto royal property. And now that dude died in federal detention after being charged with sex trafficking and allegedly running some kind of international underage sex ring with his wealthy and important friends and… shockingly! Shockingly I haven’t yet read a thinkpiece or an outrage column about how offside it is for the son of the Queen of England to be bringing that stank around on those hallowed grounds – HOW DARE HE is what I would have expected to see in an essay by our regular English blowhards in the Daily Mail or the Sun, but none have materialised and none of them have gone on any daytime chat shows to express their disgust either so…
Maybe they’re just working really hard on the writing, you know? Maybe they just want to get it exactly right, because this is just so egregious, maybe later today or tomorrow we’ll finally get to read their flaming words about how Prince Andrew, while he’s denied all suggestions of impropriety related to Jeffrey Epstein, still has yet to explain their relationship, their connection, and how exactly he found himself in the same place at the same time with a then-underage young woman who is accusing his former friend of sexual misconduct and forcing her to have sex with his associates.
I look forward to it.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
