Jeffrey Epstein charged

[Innula Zenovka]

Depends on who the bosses might be. There are some people you don't cross if you value your life.

Certainly if I were one of the guards and I'd taken money from the sort of people who were likely offering it to look the other way (and to fail to notice the CCTV recording was on the blink), then I think I'd certainly rather take my chances in court -- even if it meant a conviction and sentence -- than take my chances by turning state's evidence (or whatever the US term is).

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Letter casts doubt on when Prince Andrew met Epstein

Pressure on prince grows as BT distances itself from him and letter to the Times emerges

www.theguardian.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Prince Andrew to step back from public duties 'for foreseeable future'

Duke of York issues statement amid criticism over relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

www.theguardian.com

The Queen has given permission for Prince Andrew to “step back from public duties for the foreseeable future” after days of mounting pressure following his unrepentant interview with the BBC about his friendship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Duke of York also said he was “willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required” over the US probe into Epstein.

ETA: Hole. Digging. Stop.

Prince Andrew 'considering second interview to put things right'

The Duke of York's first effort did not go as planned.

metro.co.uk

 

[Essence Lumin]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Prince Andrew: I don’t remember duke staying over, says consul‑general | News | The Times

Prince Andrew: I don’t remember duke staying over, says consul‑general Ben Ellery November 22 2019, 12:01am, The Times Andrew with Sir Thomas Harris and Lady Catherine Meyer in New York in October 200...

www.evernote.com

Question -- part of Prince Andrew's explanation of why he couldn't have bought drinks for Ms Giuffre at the Tramp nightclub in Jermyn Street back in 2001 is that he has no idea where the bar is.

I've been to Tramp only once, when I was invited to a party there in the late 1990s, and as far as I remember it was impossible to miss the bars in any part of the club.

Can anyone else who is at all familiar with the club confirm my impression?

 

[Beebo Brink]

Prince Andrew: I don’t remember duke staying over, says consul‑general | News | The Times

Prince Andrew: I don’t remember duke staying over, says consul‑general Ben Ellery November 22 2019, 12:01am, The Times Andrew with Sir Thomas Harris and Lady Catherine Meyer in New York in October 200...

www.evernote.com

This stands to me, just because the British consult-general rather obviously didn't even try to protect the duke. Which speaks volumes about how often and how much Prince Andrew alienates people around him.

The Duke of York’s alibi for an alleged sexual encounter with a teenager has been questioned by the British consul-general with whom he said that he was staying.

 

[Beebo Brink]

And this shoe finally dropped.

Given how many charities are distancing themselves from Andrew's "business mentoring initiatives", it sounds like Amanda Thirsk has been effectively retired, or at least moved far enough away from any meaningful activity that she can't wreak havoc anymore. That she fought so hard for the interview -- which was guaranteed to be a train wreck -- shows just how deep in the royal bubble she was living. If she'd had any realistic awareness of how thick, arrogant and self-centered Andrew is, she could have predicted this outcome too. But apparently she was oblivious to his short-comings, and that starry-eyed worship didn't do him any favors.

Prince Andrew's private office to be moved out of Buckingham Palace

Duke intends to keep working on mentoring scheme despite saying he would step back from public life

www.theguardian.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Met faces new questions over ‘trafficked’ teen in Epstein case

Victims’ tsar to query Force’s decision not to act over Prince Andrew claims

www.theguardian.com

The Victims’ Commissioner is demanding that the Metropolitan Police explain its decision not to pursue a full investigation into claims a teenager was trafficked to the UK to have sex with Prince Andrew.

The Observer understands that Dame Vera Baird QC, a former solicitor general and chair of the Board of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, has taken a close interest in the allegations, first examined by Scotland Yard in 2015.

Baird, who has focused on protecting victims of sexual and domestic abuse throughout her career, is currently observing election purdah and cannot speak to the media.

However, prior to the election she made her views known to a victims’ rights campaigner, telling him that she would be requesting a meeting with the Met once purdah was over.

“Before the election was called I spoke at length with the Victims’ Commissioner and we both find it extraordinary that this matter was not proceeded with,” Harry Fletcher said.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

More on HRH: The dangerous liaisons of Prince Andrew post-divorce | News | The Times

And here's his special guest appearance in Hellblazer 54 (June 1992):

 

[Beebo Brink]

More on HRH: The dangerous liaisons of Prince Andrew post-divorce | News | The Times

So Andrews has been a rolling train wreck for most of his life. To keep hearing that he's Elizabeth's favorite son makes me wonder what kind of psychological mess she is, beneath the royal veneer.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I was reading this Vanity Fair article about Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's partner (I refuse to use "girlfriend" to describe a woman of her age), Prince Andrew's old university friend and alleged procuress: The Hunt for Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Enabler Ghislaine Maxwell

Two things occur to me -- the first is that, although Ms Maxwell and HRH are often described as "university friends," that can't be right because, while they could both have met at university, she took her undergraduate degree at Oxford, while Prince Andrew didn't attend university at all, going straight from school to train at Britannia Royal Naval College before embarking on a career as a helicopter pilot in the Royal Navy.

The only way to make sense of the description is to assume it means they happened to met when she was a student at Oxford and he was an officer cadet, but I personally wouldn't describe that as "university friends."

The other point was that, while Vanity Fair and all the other media outlets that have been trying to locate Ms Maxwell in places all over both the Americas and Europe, I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned Israel as a possibility.

While her mother was a French Huguenot who had her brought up as an Anglican, her father, Robert Maxwell, was himself Jewish and, more significantly, clearly very well-regarded by most sides of political opinion in Israel (he'd certainly helped them gain military aid from Czechoslovakia immediately after WW2, and he seems to have been on very good terms with Israeli intelligence throughout his career).

According to Wikipedia

Robert Maxwell was accorded almost a state funeral in Israel, attended by the prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, the president, Chaim Herzog, ″no less than six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence" and a galaxy of dignitaries and politicians, both government and opposition, and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Herzog delivered the eulogy, the Kaddish was recited by his fellow Holocaust survivor, friend and longtime attorney Samuel Pisar.

I'm sure there would still be sufficient goodwill there towards her family to allow her to remain quietly extradition-proof there, in one of the more upmarket parts of Tel Aviv, as did Shirley Porter during her difficulties with the British courts.

It just seemed to me odd that, at least apparently, no one is looking for her somewhere she has such a strong family connection.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Prince Andrew scandal: Virginia Giuffre pleads for UK public support

American tells BBC she was told to have sex with royal by Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell

www.theguardian.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Prince Andrew scandal: Virginia Giuffre pleads for UK public support

American tells BBC she was told to have sex with royal by Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell

www.theguardian.com

Giuffre comes across as much more earnest and believable than Andrew. His interview was such a bad move, because it stripped away enough of that royal mystique to show a self-absorbed asshole trying to pass off nonsense. I thought he was guilty before this, so I'm probably not an unbiased observer, but it's difficult to see how anyone could take him at his word after that performance for BBC.

Now BP is caught in a very difficult position. They obviously feel obliged to defend Andrew as innocent, but he looks so guilty that the attempt to shield him makes the crown look corrupt. And, given the severity of charges they are trying to deny, "corrupt" might well be applicable.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Giuffre comes across as much more earnest and believable than Andrew. His interview was such a bad move, because it stripped away enough of that royal mystique to show a self-absorbed asshole trying to pass off nonsense. I thought he was guilty before this, so I'm probably not an unbiased observer, but it's difficult to see how anyone could take him at his word after that performance for BBC.

Now BP is caught in a very difficult position. They obviously feel obliged to defend Andrew as innocent, but he looks so guilty that the attempt to shield him makes the crown look corrupt. And, given the severity of charges they are trying to deny, "corrupt" might well be applicable.

'Prince Andrew can't slink away from this now' – the TV triumph of Virginia Giuffre

Calm, thorough and deeply plausible, Virginia Giuffre’s BBC interview was everything Prince Andrew’s wasn’t – and it made the severity of the accusations against him look undeniable

www.theguardian.com

There was nothing flashy about The Prince and the Epstein Scandal. There were no stand-out lines, and no memes will come of it, but Virginia Giuffre managed to be everything Prince Andrew wasn’t. She was thorough where Andrew was evasive. She was determined where Andrew panicked. She sat with the weight of her accusations where Andrew ignored them. Her proximity to Epstein left her with nothing. Andrew’s left him with everything to lose. More than anything, Giuffre looked like a person; a real, flesh and blood person who had spent at least some of her life dealing with the consequences of something. She was Andrew’s opposite in every way.

This was a much more muted hour of television than Newsnight. Newsnight let Prince Andrew tie his own shoelaces together and watched him fall, but this is what made sure he’ll never get up again. Facts and inconsistencies were fastidiously laid out one after the other. Different voices – victims, lawyers, former heads of royal protection – were piled up until the severity of the accusations against Andrew became undeniable. This isn’t something he can slink away from any more. This isn’t going to go anywhere.

 

[Beebo Brink]

And as I suspected, the damage ripples way beyond Andrew.

How Prince Andrew forced me to recognise the hollowness of The Crown | Emma Brockes

Why do we continue to throw vast sums of money at these inadequate people, both on TV and in life, asks Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

www.theguardian.com

It's just not Woking: Prince Andrew has already ruined The Crown

The thought of having to wait a decade for the Netflix take on the most staggering spectacle of our time – Prince Andrew’s interview – is torture

www.theguardian.com

To watch the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview on Saturday night followed by The Crown on Sunday morning was to watch the difference between night and day. The former was extraordinary; an extended moment of clownish, life-changing stupidity wrapped around a kernel of true nastiness. Prince Andrew has been accused of doing genuinely awful things that reek of consequence-free privilege. The way in which he blithely slow-blinked his way into catastrophe during the interview seems to suggest that he still doesn’t understand the scale of what has been levelled at him, and that is absolutely damning for his family.

 

[Free]

Looks like it's time for this video in regards to the British royalty...

 

[Beebo Brink]

More fallout from Prince Andrew's association with Epstein.

Prince Andrew proves why Canada needs to cut ties to British monarchy

The appalling behavior of Prince Andrew — who had a close relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has been accused of being a patron of Epstein’s underage sex trafficking ring — is a good reminder of the high price that monarchy asks.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

More fallout from Prince Andrew's association with Epstein.

Prince Andrew proves why Canada needs to cut ties to British monarchy

Prior to recently my responses to such opinion pieces was a typical Canadian, "And then what? End up like the Americans?"

Then Johnson came along.

 

[Ava Glasgow]

Trump "don't know the guy"ed Prince Andrew:

Prince Andrew becomes the latest person Trump pretends not to know

"I don't know Prince Andrew," Trump claimed today, despite quite a bit of evidence suggesting he knows Prince Andrew.

www.msnbc.com