Sorry about the irony of using this ABC News Video.
off-guardian | The choking cloud of Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophilic legacy has been floating over the Atlantic for some time.
It does its best (or worst) in matters of US and British celebrity,
warts and all. It has not, for instance, exempted the British Royal
Family, whose cupboard stocked with misbehaviours and raunchiness got
just more crowded with the antics of the Duke of York.
Prince Andrew’s performance on Saturday on the BBC’s Newsnight
was an object study of how not to self-exonerate. The prince had been
thick with Epstein, though hardly a luminary when compared to that
particularly chocked address book. The meetings between them were
sufficiently frequent to warrant questions.
Madeleine Aggeler reminds us:
Mar-a-Lago in 2000; his presence at Epstein’s spacious abode in 2010;
the foot massages from “two well-dressed Russian women” in 2013.
But when it came to alleged misdeeds, the prince can count himself
high up in the rankings, with one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia
Roberts Giuffre, adamant that she was forced when underage to have sex
with the royal on three separate occasions.
In September, it became clear that the FBI was conducting an
investigation into Prince Andrew’s Epstein link. As a member of the US
Department of Justice revealed, “The
US investigation is focusing on several potential victims in the hope
that they can provide more details about Prince Andrew and his
connection to the Epstein case.”
The level of Buckingham Palace’s seriousness regarding such claims is
measured by the degree royal excursions are shortened. The palace has
not been quite so sympathetic to Prince Andrew as they might, a point
made by the shortening of a golf vacation in Spain over the summer.
