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, according to reports. The email, published in the Mail on Sunday and the Sun on Sunday, appears to contradict the Duke of York’s earlier claim that he had ceased contact with the convicted child sex offender in December 2010.
In the email sent on 28 February 2011, the day after the photograph of Andrew, Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell became public, the prince told Epstein to “keep in close touch” and expressed a wish to “play some more soon”. He 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.”
The correspondence emerged after Andrew told the BBC’s Newsnight programme in 2019 that he broke off his friendship with Epstein in December 2010, following a meeting in New York. However, the 2011 email suggests he remained in contact. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation of prostitution with a minor and was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, with the death ruled a suicide.
Separately, it has also been reported that former Prime Minister Tony Blair met Epstein at Downing Street in May 2002, after a recommendation from Peter Mandelson. Mandelson, who described Epstein as “safe” and a “friend” in an email to Blair’s chief of staff, was later sacked as US ambassador over his ties to Epstein. The meeting predated Epstein’s criminal conviction.
