Pressure is mounting in the US for the former Prince Andrew to answer questions about the nature of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and accusations that he raped Virginia Giuffre when she was 17 -which he has always denied.
Several Democrats on Capitol Hill have indicated they want to hear from the man now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and Donald Trump has also weighed in.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump offered his sympathy for the Royal Family and for King Charles III, who hosted him recently during the President’s second state visit.
“It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to the family,” said Trump. “That’s been a tragic situation, and it’s too bad. I mean, I feel badly for the family.”
Yet viewed from one angle, it is Trump himself and his Republican Party who are blocking the process.
Having vowed on the campaign trail to release all materials from the so-called Epstein Files and Epstein’s purported “client list”, Trump, since returning to the White House, has slow-walked releasing such material, and his Department of Justice said it would not be opening a new investigation.
Given the US President’s grip on his party and administration, it is inconceivable that that decision was made by anyone other than him.
At the moment, a handful of Democratic members of the House of Representatives have said they would like to question Andrew about several issues.
These include his alleged demand to his royal protection police officer, in 2011, to obtain information about Giuffre, a US citizen, including her social security number. Doing so would be a crime.
Recently released emails revealed Andrew remained in contact with Epstein after his conviction in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, contrary to what he had claimed. In one 2010 email, Andrew wrote that it would be “good to catch up in person” after Epstein was released from prison.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois’s eighth congressional district, is a member of the House Oversight Committee currently investigating the Epstein case.
He told the BBC he and others were ready to summon Mountbatten Windsor with a subpoena. He acknowledged such a measure would be difficult to enforce if Andrew were not in the US.
“Come clean, come before the US Congress, voluntarily testify, don’t wait for a subpoena,” Krishnamoorthi said. “Come and testify and tell us what you know. Not just to give justice to the survivors but to prevent this from ever happening again.”
Earlier this summer, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson sent home members of the House of Representatives. Critics said he did so under pressure from Trump so as to prevent a vote that could force the release of all the remaining Epstein material.
Trump, as with Mountbatten Windsor, has long denied any allegations of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, but there is the potential for both men to be embarrassed or harmed if more material were to be made public.
To the outrage of many of Epstein’s victims, Trump has been pondering potentially offering a pardon to the paedophile’s long-time associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of conspiring with Epstein to groom and abuse hundreds of girls and young women.
In another move similarly condemned, Trump dispatched his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche, now Deputy Attorney General, to question Maxwell. In a transcript of their conversation, she apparently denied seeing Trump doing anything wrong, and called him a “gentleman”.
For many years, some observers believed Mountbatten Windsor was off limits to investigation while he was a member of the Royal Family and protected by Queen Elizabeth II, who is said to have personally contributed to the settlement from her own personal wealth.
That is no longer the case, after Charles stripped him of his tiles, kicked him out of his royal residence and suggested thoughts were with the victims and not his younger brother.
Attention is now focused on two issues.
The first is what might come of a Metropolitan Police investigation into the allegations he tried to obtain personal information about Giuffre, who he paid a reported £12m in a 2022 settlement while accepting no blame.
The second is what the FBI may be doing right now and whether they are already digging into the case.
On Monday, neither the FBI’s headquarters, or its Florida field office in Miami, which had handled the Epstein case, responded to inquiries from The i Paper.
Typically the Bureau would need some fresh information, or witness, in order to start a new investigation. Might that material be contained in the documents Trump and the Republicans are refusing to make free?
Suhas Subramanyam, another Democratic member of Congress, said Mountbatten Windsor could appear remotely, with a lawyer and even address the committee privately.
He told the BBC: “Frankly, Andrew’s name has come up many times from the victims. So he clearly has knowledge of what happened, and we just want him to come forward and tell us what he knows.
“If he wants to clear his name, if he wants to do right by the victims, he will come forward.”
