Prince Andrew told Jeffrey Epstein “we are in this together” in a 2011 email sent after a photograph of the royal with a teenage Virginia Giuffre was published, according to reports in the Mail on Sunday and the Sun on Sunday. The correspondence contradicts Andrew’s previous claims that he had ended contact with the convicted sex offender in 2010.
The email, dated 28 February 2011, was sent the day after the now-infamous image of Andrew, Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell became public. In it, the Duke of York told Epstein to “keep in close touch” and expressed a desire to “play some more soon”. He signed off as “A, HRH The Duke of York, KG”.
In a 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, Andrew stated he had broken off his friendship with Epstein in December 2010, after the two were photographed together in New York. However, the newly surfaced email suggests otherwise, with Andrew writing: “I’m just as concerned for you! Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it.”
The email was partially disclosed in court documents earlier this year, linked to a legal case involving former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley and the Financial Conduct Authority. Epstein died in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, with his death ruled a suicide.
Separately, it emerged that former Prime Minister Tony Blair met Epstein in Downing Street in 2002, following a recommendation from Peter Mandelson, who described Epstein as “safe” in an email to Blair’s chief of staff.
