The intel scandal behind Prince Andrew’s twisted Epstein exploits

By Kit Klarenberg

In an interview with The Grayzone, author Andrew Lownie details shocking findings of his research into Prince Andrew’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Describing Andrew as his “Super Bowl trophy,” Epstein used the prince for intel, which he passed to foreign spy agencies. Lownie says further revelations threaten to “bury” the Royal Family.

Prince Andrew’s decades-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was “earlier, longer, and far more intimate than anyone has previously admitted,” historian Andrew Lownie told The Grayzone. Their friendship was so depraved that even Epstein, the self-proclaimed “king of kink,” was shocked by the Prince’s sexual appetites, according to Lownie’s new book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York.

Based on years of research in BBC archives, interviews, and leaked emails, Lownie’s investigation provides a chilling portrait of a man shielded by royal privilege, addicted to sex from childhood, and ultimately undone by his alliance with the world’s most notorious pedophile. The historian reveals that Epstein not only supplied Andrew with a steady stream of underage girls, but also gathered intelligence from the prince, and dutifully passed it along to Mossad and other spy agencies.

“The Prince was a useful idiot who gave Epstein respectability and access to political leaders and business opportunities,” Lownie explained to The Grayzone. “Meanwhile, Epstein offered Andrew an opportunity to join the super rich and enjoy a lifestyle to which he had long aspired, an endless supply of women, a chance to make lots of money, and someone who would bankroll his lavish lifestyle as well as settle Sarah Ferguson’s debts.”

Lownie revealed that Epstein was able to gather a steady flow of sensitive intelligence from Andrew, including potential blackmail material which he could hawk to foreign governments. Epstein’s one-time ‘mentor,’ the serial fraudster Steven Hoffenberg echoed this account, claiming Epstein referred to Andrew as his “Super Bowl trophy.” While the British royal unwittingly spied on Epstein’s behalf, he simultaneously compromised himself, making him into a perfect tool.

For much of his life, Andrew enjoyed an astonishing level of protection and indulgence from his mother, Queen Elizabeth. A former worker interviewed by an Australian outlet divulged that royal staffers were terrified by the prince’s impunity, and largely avoided standing up to his compulsive bullying because “Her Majesty almost always backed him and he fully exploited that.”

Lownie told The Grayzone Andrew’s explosive tantrums at Buckingham Palace, which reduced some targets to tears, were a “virtually daily” occurrence.

A source close to Andrew revealed to Lownie that the prince began exhibiting unusual sexual tendencies when he was only eight years old. The problem only worsened when Andrew lost his virginity at age 11 after a friend’s father hired two escorts for the boys. Andrew reportedly informed the source that by the time he was 13, he had already slept with over half a dozen girls, leading the source to conclude that the prince had been “a victim of sexual abuse at a very young age.”

Thanks to Andrew and Epstein, the cycle of abuse allegedly continued with a number of young girls — most notably, Virginia Giuffre. When her allegations against the Prince became public in 2015, a BBC team secretly travelled across the US, reviewing police files, while interviewing the pair’s victims at length. Along the way, they unearthed emails between Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell discussing Giuffre.

The emails offer no indication either were unaware of Giuffre, or any sense her allegations were bogus. Lownie says the BBC team’s lead investigator told him, “instead Andrew and Maxwell worked together to build a dossier about Virginia [Giuffre] to leak to the media.” In other words, the pair colluded to smear one of their victims in the court of public opinion, before legal action could be initiated. When a suit was finally initiated on her behalf, Andrew paid out handsomely rather than face scrutiny.

Lownie believes full disclosure of Andrew’s involvement with Epstein could permanently sink the House of Windsor. A former Buckingham Palace staffer told him, “they’d never be able to bounce back from it,” as the resultant scandal “would bury them for good.” Lownie’s source cautioned, “if the unconditional truth is ever released, the British public would try to impeach the Royal Family — after all, many of Andrew’s wrongdoings were done on the British taxpayer’s tab.”

Andrew’s sexual depravity shocks even Epstein

Canadian journalist Ian Halperin was the only reporter to interview Epstein at length before the financier’s death. He provided Lownie with exclusive access to his records. They show Epstein was surprisingly candid about his predilection for underage girls, to the extent of openly arguing pedophilia should be decriminalized. Along the way, the pedophile offered a number of explosive revelations about Andrew, who he described as his “closest friend in the world.”

In one email, Epstein insisted he and Andrew were “very similar,” as they were “both serial sex addicts” who’d even “shared the same women.” Andrew was “the only person I have met who is more obsessed with pussy than me,” he attested. Based on “reports” Epstein received from their mutual sexual conquests, Andrew was “the most perverted animal in the bedroom,” he wrote. Epstein expressed awe at the degeneracy of Andrew, who he said possessed “the dirtiest mind I’ve ever seen,” concluding: “He likes to engage in stuff that’s even kinky to me – and I’m the king of kink!”

Lownie also provides evidence that the depraved duo crossed paths far earlier than is claimed by Andrew. According to a statement by the prince after Epstein’s death, he insisted they met in 1999 and subsequently saw each other “probably no more than only once or twice a year.” In reality, Andrew’s private secretary places the start of their friendship in “the early 1990s,” Lownie explained. Flight logs from Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the Lolita Express, reveal that Andrew’s occasional partner, Sarah Ferguson, travelled on the aircraft with her children as early as April 1998.

By 2000, the royal had become a fixture at elite Stateside social events hosted by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the publishing heiress who met Andrew during the 1980s at Oxford University. As their friendship developed, Andrew and Ferguson often stayed at Epstein’s palatial New York and Florida homes.

These trips have largely been concealed from the public, which is perhaps understandable given the purpose of his visits.

“Whenever Andrew was in town, I’d be picking up young girls who were essentially prostitutes,” Epstein’s personal driver, Ivan Novikov, recalled to Lownie. “One time I drove him and two young girls around 18 to the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meatpacking District. Both girls were doing lines of cocaine. Prince Andrew was making out with one of them.”

All the while, Epstein and Maxwell were insinuating themselves into the top echelons of the British aristocracy. According to one now-deleted British media report, Andrew invited Epstein and Maxwell to attend events at Windsor Castle and Sandringham in 2001, including Queen Elizabeth II’s 74th birthday that August. The article, which has since been scrubbed from London’s Evening Standard website, quoted a friend of Ferguson’s as saying Andrew’s lewdness was so undisguised that he “travels abroad with his own massage mattress.” According to the Evening Standard, the “very manipulative” Maxwell introduced Andrew to a “sex aid entrepreneur” at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

The same piece described Andrew traveling around Phuket, Thailand with Maxwell, frequenting “sex bars in the area’s red light district”, and visiting Los Angeles with his friend and “self-confessed drug dealer” Brett Livingstone-Strong. During this time, Andrew was apparently so infatuated with Epstein and his clique that he opted to stay at the pedophile’s Miami beach mansion rather than attend his daughter Eugenie’s 12th birthday party at Disneyland Paris, Lownie reveals.

Andrew’s fall from grace

In May 2007, Epstein began negotiating an unusually lenient plea deal with Florida authorities after local police uncovered a trove of evidence implicating the financier in a national sex trafficking conspiracy. Finally, English-language media began scrutinizing the potentially pedophilic implications of the financier’s bond with Prince Andrew for the first time. Another since-deleted Evening Standard report on their friendship noted Epstein’s Florida mansion was filled with pictures of nude girls, with two cameras found hidden in clocks.

The net significantly tightened in December 2014, when lawyers filed court papers in Florida alleging Andrew was one of several prominent figures who’d raped Virginia Giuffre at Epstein’s arrangement. The pair purportedly had sex in London, New York, and on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James. In the latter case, Giuffre claimed to have been involved in a “disgusting” orgy with Andrew, Epstein, and multiple girls who “all seemed and appeared to be under the age of 18.”

The filings also alleged Andrew had lobbied on Epstein’s behalf after his arrest, working to ensure he received a light sentence. Epstein repaid the favor by clearing Sarah Ferguson’s substantial debts. British media reacted with shock: “Prince Andrew may have been secretly filmed with underage girl he is alleged to have abused,” blared one mainstream headline. That day, a seemingly frantic Andrew emailed Maxwell: “Let me know when we can talk. Got some specific questions to ask you about Virginia Roberts.”

Buckingham Palace issued a firm denial, stating “any suggestion of impropriety” by Andrew “with underage minors is categorically untrue,” and that he “emphatically denied the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts.” Until Epstein’s death, the British media seemingly accepted the royal line. But Andrew’s now-notorious November 2019 Newsnight interview revived public suspicions, and ignited a new wave of scrutiny.

Over the course of an hour-long grilling, the Prince offered a series of preposterous excuses for his friendship with Epstein, while failing to credibly explain his time with Giuffre. For example, he claimed her account of him sweating profusely while they danced together at a London night club couldn’t be true, as he was unable to sweat at all because he suffered a scientifically implausible “adrenaline overdose” during the Falklands war.

Next, Andrew attempted to justify a four-day December 2010 visit to Epstein in New York, during which paparazzi documented a young woman leaving his town house, and a friendly walk he enjoyed with the prince through Central Park. (The tweet below incorrectly dates the footage from 2011; it was filmed on December 6, 2010).

In his Newsnight interview, Andrew claimed he initiated the meeting to break off ties with the financier following his conviction for sex trafficking offenses. He insisted that he felt the need to end their connection in person, due to his “tendency to be too honourable,” but struggled to explain why this necessitated a four-night-long stay, replete with a dinner party in his personal honor.

The prince claimed he opted to stay at Epstein’s mansion as “it was… convenient” — apparently overlooking the British consulate and numerous upmarket hotels which could have provided an alternative to staying with a convicted sex offender.

Furor over Andrew’s performance erupted as soon as the interview was broadcast, with one royal observer dubbing it, “nuclear explosion level bad.” Yet the Prince was initially satisfied with his public self-immolation. The Guardian reported at the time that Andrew “was so pleased with how things had gone that he gave the Newsnight team a tour of the palace afterwards.”

Andrew’s British state protection crumbles

Days after the disastrous interview, Andrew’s ex-girlfriend disputed his account of the 2010 visit with Epstein, stating that the prince’s main purpose was to determine whether the financier had “any dirt on him.” The pair reportedly also discussed securing $200 million funding for mysterious energy company Aria Petroleum, prompting Epstein to inform close contacts at JP Morgan that the prince sought to represent the interests of a Chinese commercial entity.

From this point on, Andrew withdrew from public life. Under pressure from British Army apparatchiks, he was stripped of his military awards and decorations. Charities distanced themselves from the royal, while polls indicated a majority of Britons believed he should be extradited to the US to face questioning. In May 2020, Andrew permanently resigned all his public roles over his Epstein connections. In the meantime, pressure began building in the US for the Prince to speak to Giuffre’s lawyers and federal investigators.

In his Newsnight interview and subsequent official statements, Andrew claimed he was happy to assist with any investigation into Epstein’s abuse. But the American prosecutor who led investigations into the financier and his associates in New York, Geoffrey Berman, reported he was repeatedly stonewalled by Buckingham Palace. Contacting royal lawyers was difficult enough in the first place, he said, and he described their communications as having quickly devolved into an never-ending series of questions.

“What kind of an interview will it be? Are there any protections? Is there this? Is there that? And where do you want it to take place?” Berman recalled. “It was an endless email exchange, and it was clear we were getting the run-around. He was not going to sit down for an interview with us.” Finally, Berman asked the State Department to dispatch a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) request to British police, demanding an interview with the prince.

US prosecutors “almost always got what we asked when we put in an MLAT request,” Berman recalled. “But that was not what happened with Prince Andrew. We got absolutely nowhere. Were they protecting him? I assume someone was.”

Andrew’s state-level protections began to dissolve, however, after a December 2020 investigation by the Daily Mail into Giuffre’s claim that Andrew had sex with her when she was just 17. His alibis for the dates in question had been incinerated.

In August 2021, Giuffre’s lawyers filed suit against Andrew in a US court for “sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” The action raised the prospect of Andrew giving sworn testimony proving his inability to sweat on the witness stand. Members of the Royal Family, including Ferguson and their daughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, also faced the threat of grilling under oath. Rather than go to court, the House of Windsor settled for as much as $16.3 million.

Andrew Prince no more as scandals proliferate

For the first time, Buckingham Palace began to firmly distance itself from Andrew. As Lownie recorded, the media was informed that the Queen would no longer bankroll his legal fees. After a lifetime of protecting her son from the consequences of his excesses, fear of further damaging admissions may have motivated the monarch’s decision.

Those fears were well-founded, as Lownie revealed that Andrew emailed Epstein in February 2011, months after claiming to have cut off all contact with the financier following their four day 2010 ‘farewell’ summit in New York.

In that email, Andrew promised to “keep in close touch,” stating, “we are in this together and will have to rise above it,” and promising, “we’ll play some more soon!!!” That same year, Sarah Ferguson expressed her affinity and gratitude to Epstein in a separate covert email exchange. Sources suggested to Lownie that Epstein had supplied her with hundreds of thousands of dollars, far in excess of the £15,000 she claims to have received from the serial sex abuser.

In a 2011 interview, Ferguson said “having anything to do” with Epstein had been a “gigantic error of judgment” on her part. She added, “I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children…what he did was wrong and…he was rightly jailed.” Shortly after though, she contacted Epstein claiming she “did not, absolutely not, say the ‘P word’ about you.” Ferguson apologised for letting him down, stating “you have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.”

This October 30, as furor over Epstein’s activities engulfed the Trump administration, Buckingham Palace issued a shock declaration. Prince Andrew will be stripped of his titles, honors, and stately home, and now simply be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – in effect excommunicated from the British Royal Family for life. While no formal explanation for the unprecedented move was provided, it was clear they were determined to cleanse Epstein’s stain from their house.

“These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” the royal statement read. “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

But Andrew’s erasure from the spotlight, termination of his assorted patronages and curtailment of public duties may have come too late. After years of alternating between silence over his sexual abuse or flatly denying the allegations, Buckingham Palace faces the threat of further disclosures. As Lownie makes clear in his newly released book, Entitled, new details of the prince’s perversions could discredit the royal family for good.