“Zero cooperation.”
That’s how Prince Andrew is treating the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a top federal prosecutor overseeing the case said.
Speaking at a news conference outside Epstein’s New York mansion, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said prosecutors and the FBI have contacted the British prince and requested an interview. “To date, Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation,” Berman said.
Prince Andrew palled around with Epstein for years, visiting his Manhattan penthouse, his Florida mansion, and his private island in the Caribbean. At one point, when the two were together in London, the prince was pictured with Virginia Roberts Guiffre, who claims that he had sex with her when she was just 17 years old.
Andrew has vehemently denied the pair ever had sex, but she has detailed the evening several times, including once in a lawsuit against Epstein.
Last September, Guiffre said in an NBC interview that Prince Andrew was “pouring with perspiration” when they danced at a London club called Tramp in 2001. “He was a hideous dancer and he was sweating profusely all over me. I just remember like, ‘Ugh, I need a shower. This is disgusting.’ ”
Andrew made a bizarre defense about the claim. During the BBC interview, interviewer Emily Maitlis asked the Prince about Guiffre’s account. “She described dancing with you… and you profusely sweating.”
Prince Andrew said that’s impossible, claiming that he had a medical condition at the time that made it so he did not sweat.
“There’s a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time. Yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when I was shot at and I simply … it was almost impossible for me to sweat,” he said.
Andrew announced last year that he was withdrawing from his royal duties amid renewed attention of his friendship with Epstein. Andrew’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, authorized her son’s eviction from the London palace in what is just “the latest humiliation for the beleaguered” Duke of York, The Times of London reported.
That puts Andrew out in the cold, with no official offices and no official duties.
“It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organisations and charities that I am proud to support,” Andrew said in a statement last month.
There are many skeptics as to whether Epstein killed himself, as prison authorities claim. And Berman said the case if far from over.
“Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t have done what he did without the assistance of others, and I can assure you that the investigation is moving forward,” he said.
