Prince Andrew faces fresh pressure after it emerged he promised Jeffrey Epstein they would ‘play some more soon!’ weeks after supposedly cutting ties with the paedophile.
The Duke of York sent a bombshell email pledging to ‘keep in close touch’, despite claiming he had ceased all contact with the American financier weeks earlier, it has emerged.
The new evidence suggests Andrew may have lied in his infamous Newsnight interview. He insisted to Emily Maitlis in the disastrous 2019 grilling at Buckingham Palace that he had stopped seeing Epstein in early December 2010, when they were photographed walking through New York’s Central Park.
The Duke said: ‘I never had any contact with him from that day forward.’
Yet sickening emails have emerged demolishing this claim, showing that in February 2011 Andrew wrote to his paedophile friend: ‘Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’
Last night one of Epstein’s victims, Marijke Chartouni, said: ‘This solidifies the fact that Andrew has selective amnesia when it comes to his friendship with Epstein, just like other powerful men who knew him.’
Spencer Kuvin, a Florida lawyer who represents several Epstein victims, told the Mail: ‘The 2011 email clearly contradicts Andrew’s previous claims he stopped contacting Epstein in 2010. There should be further investigation.
‘The comment of ‘play some more soon’ – they’re not tennis partners, the only thing they were doing was partying together.’
It is the latest calamity for Prince Andrew, 64, already a royal pariah after being forced to step back from palace duties following the fallout from the Epstein scandal, and then the Chinese spy saga that sent shockwaves through the Government and the Palace.
There was another humiliating twist yesterday as it emerged an aide to the Duke told the alleged Chinese spy that the Newsnight interview had been ‘hugely ill-advised’.
Across the Atlantic, there was even more uncomfortable news for the Prince as Donald Trump’s choice to head the FBI pledged to expose more about Epstein’s network.
Kash Patel told senators: ‘I will do everything, if confirmed as FBI director, to make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened in the past.’
He agreed to a senator’s demands to open up records ‘of who flew on Epstein’s plane and who helped him build an international human trafficking, sex trafficking ring’.
There is no suggestion that Andrew – who did fly on the financier’s private jet – was an accomplice of Epstein, who was facing trial for running a child-sex trafficking ring when he was found hanged in his cell in August 2019.
The new emails have emerged from legal filings in London involving the case of Jes Staley, the former boss of Barclays Bank.
American Mr Staley, 68, is appealing against a decision by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) which slapped a ban and a £1.8 million fine on him for making two allegedly misleading statements over his close friendship to Epstein.
In opposing the appeal, the FCA has disclosed emails said to demonstrate Epstein and Mr Staley were ‘most cherished’ friends, and some of the emails involve what the FCA refers to as ‘a member of the British Royal Family’, understood to be Andrew.
On June 15, 2010, Epstein – recently released from a US prison – emailed Andrew asking him: ‘If you can find time to show Jes around that would be fun.’
The Duke replied to say he had seen Mr Staley in Harry’s Bar, and was having ‘dinner with Jes tomorrow evening’. Andrew was a regular diner at Harry’s Bar in Mayfair.
In December that year, Andrew was pictured in New York with Epstein. He had flown there ‘with the sole purpose’ of ending their relationship, and during their walk in Central Park they had agreed to part company, the Duke told the Newsnight interview, stating: ‘And to this day I never had any contact with him from that day forward.’
Yet one of the FCA emails explodes that claim as an apparent lie. The notorious Central Park photographs were published in the News of the World, followed a week later by the photo of Andrew, then 41, with his hand around the waist of teenager Virginia Roberts, now Giuffre, in socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s mews house in Mayfair.
A day after this, on February 28, 2011, Andrew emailed Epstein and discussed the press articles before writing: ‘Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’, according to the emails.
The astonishingly crass remark flies in the face of the Duke’s story to Newsnight, when he repeatedly insisted he had cut off all contact with Epstein.
He promised there was ‘no contact’, and when she pressed him, he doubled down.
Asked why he had gone to stay with a convicted sex offender, the Duke said he felt it was ‘the right thing to do’ to meet him in person to say ‘terribly sorry… I can’t see you [any more]’.
Andrew said: ‘We had an opportunity to go for a walk in the park… I said to him, I said, ‘Look, because of what has happened, I don’t think it is appropriate that we should remain in contact’.’
In 2022, Andrew paid Mrs Giuffre an undisclosed sum, reported to be £12 million, to settle her civil claim for sex assault without any admission of wrongdoing.
Maxwell, 63, was jailed for 20 years in the same year for finding girls for Epstein to abuse.
A spokesman for the Duke was approached for comment.