King Charles is set to keep Prince Andrew “at arm’s length” as he faces allegations from unsealed US court documents about Jeffrey Epstein, a royal expert has claimed.
Court papers have named the Duke of York in a detailed witness statement from a woman who claimed he groped her at Epstein’s house in New York.
The documents from the 2015 lawsuit also include names such as former US president Bill Clinton.
Andrew, who appeared on Christmas Day with the Royal Family in Sandringham, has rejected any wrongdoing.
Any chance of a royal rekindling is over, says Charlotte Griffiths
GB NEWS / GETTY
According to the Mail on Sunday’s Editor at Large, any hopes of bringing Andrew back into the royal fold have been dashed.
Charlotte Griffiths told GB News that Charles will keep his brother “at arm’s length”.
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“It’s old news for the Royal Family”, she said.
“What is different is that there was a some inkling of hope that Charles would bring Andrew back into the fold.
“That isn’t going to happen anymore. The fact he walked with the Royal Family at Sandringham on Christmas Day indicated that maybe Charles hoped he might be able to have his brother back in the Royal Family somehow.
“This is the first time since Charles became King has realised, ‘this is never going to happen, I am going to have to be tough on my brother’.
Charlotte Griffiths joined Patrick Christys to discuss the matter
GB NEWS
“He will have to be kept at arm’s length forever more.”
Andrew is mentioned more than 70 times in nearly 1,000 pages of interviews and transcripts released in the US in connection with a 2015 defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell.
The duke, who has previously strenuously denied the allegations, paid millions a year ago to settle a civil case out of court with Giuffre with no admission of guilt, after she accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.
Evidence from Johanna Sjoberg, who worked for Epstein as a masseuse, recounted how Andrew allegedly touched her breast while sitting on a couch inside Epstein’s Manhattan apartment as he posed for a photo with a caricature of himself in 2001.
The claim, which has been alleged previously, is thought to refer to a Spitting Image puppet of the duke.
Sjoberg said, while giving evidence in May 2016: “Ghislaine told me to come upstairs, and we went into a closet and pulled out the puppet, the caricature of Prince Andrew, and brought it down.
“And there was a little tag on the puppet that said ‘Prince Andrew’ on it, and that’s when I knew who he was.”
Sjoberg was asked what the puppet looked like and replied: “It looked like him.
“And she brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show on BBC.
“And they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch.
“They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.”