Prince Andrew told Jeffrey Epstein in an email that “we are in this together” after a photograph of the royal with his arm around a teenage Virginia Giuffre was published in 2011. The correspondence, revealed by the Mail on Sunday and the Sun on Sunday, appears to contradict the Duke of York’s previous claims that he had ceased contact with the convicted child sex offender by December 2010.
The email was sent on 28 February 2011, the day after the well-known photo of Andrew, Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell became public. In it, Andrew told Epstein to “keep in close touch” and expressed a wish to “play some more soon”. He signed off as “A, HRH The Duke of York, KG”.
In a 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, Andrew said he broke off his friendship with Epstein in December 2010 after being photographed with him in New York. However, the email suggests otherwise. Andrew wrote: “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.”
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation of prostitution with a minor. The email emerged in court documents in January this year, related to a case involving former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley.
Separately, it emerged that former Prime Minister Tony Blair met Epstein in Downing Street in 2002 after a recommendation from Peter Mandelson, who described Epstein as “safe” and a “friend” in an email to Blair’s chief of staff.
