Prince Andrew was seen departing Windsor Castle as he was pulled into the US court battle engulfing Ghislaine Maxwell after she was charged with new crimes connected to Jeffrey Epstein at a time when the paedophile was socialising with the royal.
The Duke of York is now facing renewed calls to be questioned by the FBI after developments in the child sex inquiry overnight expanded the breadth of the investigation.
Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and former girlfriend, faces further charges of sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor in the eight-count indictment, as well as earlier charges that include perjury.
An amended charge against Ghislaine Maxwell now covers alleged offences stretching from 1994 to 2004 in New York and Florida, including allegations that she paid the girl, known as Minor Victim 4, hundreds of dollars for each sexual act with Jeffrey Epstein. The indictment said that the girl was 14 when the grooming started.
She’d previously pleaded not guilty to helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom three teenage girls for sex between 1994 and 1997 in New York. Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, has been jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest last July.
The time frame of the new accusations has expanded to between 1994 and at least 2004, which includes the time where Jeffrey Epstein was associating with influential men like Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton.
During this time Prince Andrew became friends with Jeffrey Epstein and purportedly had sex three times with one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, accusations the Duke denies, but neither Prince Andrew nor Bill Clinton was named in the court documents but it significantly raises the possibility of them both being brought up at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.
The indictment also reveals that prosecutors plan to seize Ghislaine Maxwell’s assets if she’s convicted, and during a bail application she revealed that she and her husband Scott Borgerson were worth $22.5 million.
The new indictment dramatically increases the legal peril faced by Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s pleaded not guilty to all the accusations so far.
The 24-page document says starting at least in or around 2001 Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein lured and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, minor girls to visit Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach home to engage in sex acts with Epstein, after with Epstein, Maxwell, or another employee of Epstein’s would give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash.
And it appears that Prince Andrew is skulking behind his mother’s petticoat because there’s no prospect of him going back to the US now. Or perhaps he’s not dodging US officials, but that he’s just a tad busy now for the next twenty years – he’s also discovered he can sweat again.
The US authorities don’t just want to talk to him, they want to question him to see if he’s got any link to these crimes, and he knows that if he goes back, he will be eaten alive, but this is never going to go away because there will always be uncertainty in the back of people’s minds.
And will Ghislaine Maxwell ever stand trial, will it happen? Because she knows too much about too many top people. And that photo of Prince Andrew and that girl will never go away, and it makes you wonder who owns the copyright.
