PRINCE ANDREW TO STEP BACK FROM PUBLIC DUTIES 'FOR FORESEEABLE FUTURE'

Duke of York issues statement amid criticism over relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

Prince Andrew said he was ‘willing to help with investigations [into Jeffrey Epstein] if required’. Photograph: David Parker/AP

The Queen has given permission for Prince Andrew to “step back from public duties for the foreseeable future” after days of mounting pressure following his interview with the BBC about his friendship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Duke of York also said he was “willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations if required” over the US probe into Epstein.

The development came on a day when BT said it would not work with a digital skills scheme that counts the duke as patron, amid a growing exodus of companies and other institutions after Andrew’s interview at the weekend and pressure from a woman who says the convicted child sex offender trafficked her to London to meet the royal and have sex with him.

His effective suspension from duties by his mother was announced in a statement issued in the prince’s name, which said: “It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organisations and charities that I am proud to support.

“Therefore, I have asked Her Majesty if I may step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission.”

He added: “I continue to unequivocally regret my ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein. His suicide has left many unanswered questions, particularly for his victims, and I deeply sympathise with everyone who has been affected and wants some form of closure. I can only hope that, in time, they will be able to rebuild their lives.

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“Of course, I am willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required.”

The duke’s offer to offer of help could be a potentially major moment for the US investigation as the FBI widens the scope of its investigation in an attempt to identify more of Epstein’s victims.

Andrew had already said in his BBC interview, which aired on Saturday, that he was prepared to testify under oath “if push came to shove and the legal advice was to do so”.

However, the pressure on him was ratcheted up on Monday when a fresh Epstein accuser, who claims the financier committed a “vicious, prolonged sexual assault” against her when she was 15, called on Andrew to come forward with information about the convicted sex offender.

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The woman, who identifies herself as “Jane Doe 15”, appealed to him at a press conference in Los Angeles, where she and the lawyer Gloria Allred announced a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate. She is one of about a dozen women suing the late financier’s estate for alleged sexual abuses.

A claim by Andrew during the BBC interview to have first met Epstein in 1999 was also thrown into doubt on Wednesday after it emerged that the prince’s previous chief of staff said the two men had met in “the early 1990s”.

The claim was made by Alastair Watson, Andrew’s private secretary for nine years until 2012, who wrote a letter to the Times in 2011 to reject reports that the prince was a friend of Saif Gaddafi, son of the former Libyan dictator. Buckingham Palace pushed back at suggestions of an apparent discrepancy, with a spokesperson saying: “The duke’s words in the interview speak for themselves.”

During Saturday’s BBC Newsnight interview, Andrew was pressed on his friendship with Epstein – who killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August following his arrest on sex trafficking charges.

Andrew claims he met Epstein through Ghislaine Maxwell – the daughter of the media baron Robert Maxwell – who has been accused of serving as Epstein’s procurer.

Virginia Giuffre has claimed that Epstein flew her to London on his private jet around 2001, when she was 17 years old. She alleged that after dining and dancing, Giuffre and the prince had a sexual encounter at Maxwell’s Belgravia home. Andrew denies the claim. Maxwell has also emphatically denied wrongdoing.

The royal statement was drafted after consultation with Prince Charles, who is visiting New Zealand, and released on the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh’s 72nd wedding anniversary. It emerged just in time for the evening television bulletins and immediately nudged aside general election coverage.

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The release of the statement also followed criticism of the prince and those around him for their disastrous public relations strategy.

With the prince standing aside from duties, there were expectations that heads of staff involved in advising Andrew to do the interview would roll. A renewed spotlight is expected to fall on Amanda Thirsk, his private secretary and the figure who is believed to have pushed for the prince to do the BBC interview in the face of initial scepticism.

The interview, in which Emily Maitlis forensically dissected the prince’s responses, was carried out after Andrew ignored the guidance of Jason Stein, former special adviser to Amber Rudd and spokesman for Liz Truss, who had been hired in September to mastermind the royal’s PR fightback. He left by mutual consent two weeks ago after his advice to reject the Newsnight interview request was ignored.

Following the palace announcement, the culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, said she expected Andrew’s effective suspension to include his honorific positions as patron of organisations such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the English National Ballet. “When he says he’s going to withdraw from public duties I would expect that would be heading up, or being a patron of, organisations, institutions like that,” Morgan told ITV’s Peston programme.

Asked if she would encourage him to stand down from such institutions, she said: “I think what he has obviously clearly realised is that his presence or his involvement in these organisations, these very worthy organisations, obviously detracts from the work that they are doing, and he doesn’t want to do that.”

The prince’s suspension was described as “too little, too late” by the Women’s Equality Party. The party’s president, Catherine Mayer, who is also a royal biographer, forecast that the prince would spend the rest of his days “somewhere warm and agreeable”.

“Less predictable is whether he will yield to pressure to assist the FBI investigation into Epstein. I hope so,” she added.

Graham Smith, chief executive of the campaign group Republic, tweeted in response to news of the statement: “In a normal world it would be: head of state facing questions over son’s conduct and son removed from all official duties.”

The palace announcement came after businesses either severed ties or said that they would be reviewing their involvement with Pitch@Palace, the business mentoring scheme founded by Prince Andrew.

In an apparent attempt to limit separate damage to the Duke of York Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (iDEA), an independent digital skills scheme, a page on its website listing Salesforce, Google, BT and Microsoft as “corporate partners” was deleted.

The unravelling of Andrew’s interests had also spread to the charities that counted him as a patron. Among them, trustees at the English National Ballet were due to discuss his patronage. The controversy had also gone global, with Australian universities announcing that they would be severing ties with Pitch@palace, which claims to operate in more than 60 countries.

Sources at one of the major corporate backers in the UK said they expected the initiative to survive, but with Andrew making way for another royal such as Prince William or Harry.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/20/prince-andrew-to-step-back-from-public-duties-for-foreseeable-future