INTERVIEW HE THOUGHT ‘WENT WELL’
Calamitous: With Emily Maitlis before the 2019 TV broadcast
age was delivered Wed 08/18/2021 at 8.28am. Delivered to Royal Lodge at Windsor... Received by A POLICE OFFICER.’
Perhaps most famously of all, consider the historic PR disaster that was the prince’s 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis.
Assuming, against all available evidence, that he’d be a convincing advocate, he failed to express even the vaguest sympathy for Jeffrey Epstein’s hundreds of victims, and instead chose to go squarely on the offensive against Miss Roberts, casting her as a fantasist and saying: ‘I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.’
When Miss Maitlis asked about the notorious photograph of them together, taken on the night in March 2001 Ms Guiffre alleges she first slept with Andrew, the prince proceeded to endorse a bizarre conspiracy theory positing that it was some sort of forgery.
‘I have absolutely no memory of that photograph ever being taken,’ he said. ‘From the investigations that we’ve done, you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not because it is a photo graph of a photograph of a photograph. So it’s very difficult to be able to prove it but I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken.’
In an effort to convince viewers that the image had somehow been ‘doctored’, he then added: ‘I don’t believe it’s a picture of me in London because when I would go out in London, I wear a suit and a tie.’
Unfortunately, it took less than 24 hours for pictures to emerge of him wearing the exact same outfit while leaving Chinawhite nightclub a couple of months earlier. The image also appeared to show the duke perspiring heavily, casting doubt on his bizarre insistence that Miss Roberts’s recollection of an encounter at Tramp nightclub was unreliable because he’s somehow unable to sweat.
Incredibly, Andrew is reported to have initially left the interview, filmed at Buckingham Palace, under the impression that it had been a staggering success. It was only when the footage aired, to public disbelief, that it slowly began to dawn on him that the opposite might be true.
It was, of course, a characteristic failure of judgment that allowed Andrew to be sucked into the vortex surrounding Jeffrey Epstein in the first place. Seemingly blind to the dangers of consorting with ultra-wealthy foreigners, no matter how distasteful their lifestyle or opaque their sources of wealth, the man who would go on to hang out with an endless succession of corrupt dictators during his stint as British trade envoy decided to bring a rackety sex offender into the heart of the royal establishment.
Epstein was invited to Balmoral and ‘straightforward shooting weekends’ at Sandringham.
He even turned up at the Queen’s birthday party at Windsor Castle. And even after he’d been convicted and jailed for child sex offences, the prince saw fit to travel to New York, where he stayed at his house.
The duke attended dinner parties, and, in yet another PR disaster, was photographed walking with Epstein in Central Park.
Preposterously, he later sought to argue – during the notorious Maitlis interview – that the primary purpose of the 2011 trip was to end their friendship, and that this was the ‘honourable and right thing to do.’
Andrew added: ‘I admit fully my judgment was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable but that’s just the way it is.’
By then, legal issues had begun to rear their ugly head.
But rather than seeking a resolution, he refused to engage even with the forces of law enforcement. Requests from the FBI to interview the duke as a witness were left to gather dust.
Meanwhile, compromising evidence, such as flight logs that put Miss Roberts in London on the weekend in 2001 when she claimed to have first slept with the duke, continued to drip into the public domain.
Perhaps his greatest mistake was to assume that throwing muck at Miss Roberts would make her go away. His PR men, lawyers and friends repeatedly sought to discredit the accuser, or besmirch her reputation, perhaps most fruitlessly when they endorsed the aforementioned conspiracy theory suggesting that the picture of them together was an elaborate fake.
‘Look at his fingers in the photo. The duke has quite chubby fingers. They don’t look right and nor does the height of the duke and the girl,’ was how one briefed journalists, adding insultingly: ‘Sadly — it seems to us — this girl is simply out to make a name for herself.’
If that was indeed Miss Roberts’s intention, she has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, thoroughly vindicating herself and earning millions of dollars in the process.
As for Prince Andrew, his greatest fear is that last night’s settlement will trigger claims from other girls who may allege that they too were trafficked by Epstein.
But if this long legal nightmare does continue, he’ll only have himself to blame.
‘Bizarre claim that he somehow cannot sweat’