Was there an Establishment cover-up to protect Prince Andrew and other VIPs in the thrall of Jeffrey Epstein? I suspect so, says STEPHEN WRIGHT
It was the summer of 2020, and Prince Andrew was reeling from a series of scandals and own goals.
His BBC Newsnight interview about the Virginia Roberts affair had backfired spectacularly, forcing his resignation from royal duties, and he was involved in a bitter stand-off with a top US prosecutor who wanted to quiz him about his links to his erstwhile friend, the paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Amid claims he was arrogant and out of touch, public opinion was very much against the Duke of York. How could he retrieve his public image, let alone clear his name, over the sordid – and hotly disputed – sex claims made by his accuser?
Then I received a call from one of his small, diminishing band of supporters. Someone in his inner circle who – rightly or wrongly – was utterly convinced of his innocence. In return for exclusive access to confidential documents, diaries, key figures and potential witnesses, would I be interested in investigating the veracity of allegations made by Miss Roberts, who’d claimed she had slept with Andrew when she was a teen? Something he has always strongly denied.
The loyalist was aware of my extensive work exposing the scandal of Scotland Yard’s VIP sex abuse inquiry, Operation Midland, which had helped to clear the names of Field Marshal Lord Bramall, ex-Home Secretary Leon Brittan, former PM Sir Edward Heath, and ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor, who’d been the subject of the grotesque lies of Carl ‘Nick’ Beech.
Was the Queen’s second son also the victim of false allegations? Could he be compared to Lord Bramall, the D-Day war hero and ex-head of the Armed Forces, who was humiliated by the once fine Metropolitan Police, which stated publicly that the now-jailed serial fantasist and paedophile was a ‘credible and true’ witness?
My marathon series on the most disgraceful, cretinous police inquiry in living memory had underlined the importance of the presumption of innocence and testing the evidence. On this basis, I accepted the challenge of examining whether Andrew was the victim of false allegations. Had he, like Lord Bramall and co, been traduced?
The starting point of our four-month investigation was Emily Maitlis’s acclaimed BBC Newsnight interview with Andrew, which is the subject of a much-heralded three-part dramatisation, A Very Royal Scandal, which is released on Amazon Prime Video tomorrow. Co-produced by Maitlis, it stars Michael Sheen as the Duke and will no doubt renew public scrutiny of the case.
The car-crash interview in November 2019 caused Andrew enormous reputational damage.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/royals/article-13864433/Establishment-cover-protect-Prince-Andrew-VIPs-Jeffrey-Epstein-STEPHEN-WRIGHT.html