Prince Andrew (Image: Getty)
Prince Andrew will be haunted “for the rest of his life” by his friendship with child sex monster Jeffrey Epstein, a top US lawyer has warned.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, Spencer Kuvin, whose Florida law firm represented three of Epstein’s underage victims, added however that the Duke of York will now almost certainly not face criminal charges in America.
At the same time, with a fourth tranche of bombshell civil court documents due to be released in New York on Monday, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz – whose name also figured in last week’s document dumps – darkly warned: “There are smoking guns yet to be revealed.”
Prince Andrew, 63, who paid a reported $15.2million out-of-court settlement with alleged Epstein “sex slave” Virginia Giuffre almost two years ago, now faces a bleak future over the continuing stream of shocking revelations. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing.
Miami-based attorney Mr. Kuvin said he is highly unlikely to face criminal charges, adding: “Unfortunately, the statute of limitations has run out on most of the claims. What matters now is the public’s opinion of him after all this additional information comes out.
“Whether Andrew is guilty of any improprieties, or not, is irrelevant at this point. The more information that comes out, the more it is apparent that he should step away from all official duties.”
The prince, who was stripped of his HRH title and demoted by his late mother the Queen prior to his settlement with Ms. Giuffre and after his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview, is still eighth in line to the throne and a counsellor of state with legal powers to step in for the King.
But Mr. Kuvin, who has previously said “British police need to do their duty and reopen their investigation into his conduct,” yesterday blasted: “He is an embarrassment to the Royal Family and his relationship with Epstein will continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.”
This latest condemnation of Andrew, who turns 64 next month, comes as he appeared to be gradually easing his way back into the royal fold – and after his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson was invited to join the family for Christmas at Sandringham for the first time since 1992.
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In the latest batch of almost 200 previously sealed court papers released on Friday, the Duchess of York’s name appeared alongside that of her ex-husband – with whom she still lives in his Windsor mansion – for the first time.
Witness statements by Juan Alessi, who served as Epstein’s butler at his Palm Beach, Florida mansion from 1991 to 2002, claimed both Andrew and Sarah Ferguson had stayed there as guests. He added that Andrew “spent weeks with us” staying in the “main guest bedroom” and that he would have “daily massages.”
Other statements make clear that Andrew continued to visit even after the Wall St. financier was convicted in 2007 of the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl but jailed for a mere 13 months, purportedly as the result of a deal with prosecutors.
The unsealed documents are part of a 2015 defamation case brought by Ms. Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who helped procure underage girls for Epstein and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence in America after being found guilty of child sex trafficking in 2021.
In one batch released last week, American Johanna Sjoberg, now 43, claims Maxwell hired her as a “personal assistant” in 2001, when she was a 20-year-old student, and was immediately forced to perform sex acts.
Ms. Sjoberg told how she and Ms. Giuffre, then 17, were flown from Florida to New York to “entertain” Epstein and his friends, including Prince Andrew, at Epstein’s New York mansion.
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After meeting the prince at the Manhattan home, she claims Andrew “groped” her breast after Epstein and Maxwell had presented him with a Spitting Image puppet of himself. In her statement, she claimed: “I sat on Andrew’s lap and they took the puppet’s hand and put it on Virginia’s breast – and so Andrew put his hand on mine.”
Other prominent figures whose names appear in the court papers include former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, late King of Pop Michael Jackson, magician David Copperfield and Alan Dershowitz, current Professor Emeritus in law at Harvard, who also defended Epstein in his Palm Beach criminal case.
There is no suggestion that any of them performed criminal acts but – in an online interview with financial magazine Forbes on Friday – the 85-year-old legal expert warned that even more explosive allegations could emerge from documents yet to be released.
He declared: “I know of some documents that are dynamite and contain smoking guns yet to be revealed.” Asked why these have not already been made public, he replied: “You’d have to ask the judge.”
