While most of the British royal headlines the last few days and probably in the days to come will be about the rom-com known as Finding Freedom, about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, don’t sleep on another potential royal story that’s expected this week that is much more scandalous, much more concerning regarding Prince Andrew.
Back in 2015, Virginia Roberts Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation. In case you forgot, Virginia Roberts Giuffre is the woman who has accused Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell of sex trafficking her to their prominent associates – among them Prince Andrew, with whom she was pictured with his arm around her when she was 17 years old in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home.
Last week, a judge in New York ordered documents from that lawsuit to be unsealed and we just might be getting that information this week. Forbes has a comprehensive explanation about that process and about what might be included in that paperwork and it’s worth a read to understand the situation. Here are a couple of paragraphs related to Andrew though:
"The documents supply context and filigreed detail of the inner workings of Epstein's operations, since the core of Giuffre's dispute with Maxwell concerned Giuffre's characterization of that. The documents include the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell's own 7-hour deposition at the hands of Virginia Roberts Giuffre's lawyers on the subject of Maxwell's relationship, both professional and personal, with Epstein, estimated to run at some 400 pages. Of more direct concern to Prince Andrew and his "working group" of lawyers and public relations advisors, Roberts Giuffre's deposition by Maxwell's lawyers is also included in the dozen documents to be released.”
“In this context, it's important to remember how crucial Virginia Roberts Giuffre's narrative of her three alleged encounters with Prince Andrew are to her claims of being trafficked, to London and elsewhere, but specifically to London at the hands of Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein. In this sense it can be argued that the news of the release of the civil documents is worse for Prince Andrew than it is for his old friend Maxwell, since Andrew sits in Windsor Royal Lodge in a luxe sort of confinement of his own making, un-indicted but inexorably at the forefront of the thinking at every twist the criminal case against his friend takes.”
Virginia Roberts Giuffre has remained consistent in her allegations that Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s second son, 100% participated in the gross operation that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were running. She’s been interviewed repeatedly, she’s participated in docuseries and other programs exposing Epstein’s f-cksh-t. But getting this information from legal documents that are being reviewed by investigators prosecuting Ghislaine Maxwell represents a whole new level of worry for Prince Andrew and his advisors.
As you know, Andrew and Buckingham Palace have vigorously denied over the years that he’s done anything wrong beyond exercise poor judgment in who has decided to befriend. They’ve insisted that whatever it was that Jeffrey Epstein was up to, Prince Andrew was not involved. In Filthy Rich, the Netflix documentary about Jeffrey Epstein, in addition to Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s assertions, there are witnesses who have gone on record to say that Prince Andrew was seen on Epstein’s island in the presence of naked young-looking girls. These unsealed documents will show how both Ghislaine Maxwell and Virginia Roberts Giuffre respond to repeated questioning about Epstein’s associates. If you watched Filthy Rich, you would have seen Epstein plead the fifth during his depositions every time he was asked a question about whether or not he raped girls, whether or not he was gifted a 12 year old girl for his birthday. Like I said before, I understand why pleading the fifth is a legal protection but man, can you ever imagine being a position where someone straight up asks you if you were gifted underage girls as a birthday gift and you have to plead the fifth? How often will Ghislaine Maxwell plead the fifth? And how many times will she plead the fifth about Prince Andrew? Will these unsealed documents tell us?
