Democrats investigating Jeffrey Epstein have stepped up their calls for Britain’s former prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor to answer questions about his ties to the disgraced financier, days after King Charles stripped his younger brother of his title.
Calls for Andrew to testify came as new emails emerged showing he suggested “catching up” with Epstein just months after the notorious pedophile was released from prison.
Several Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee told the BBC that Andrew should voluntarily testify before Congress. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., said Saturday that if the former prince “wants to do right by the victims, he will come forward,” noting that his name had been mentioned “many times” in survivors’ accounts.
Committee member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., urged Andrew to “come and testify and tell us what you know” during an interview Friday, while Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said Andrew’s testimony could be “helpful in getting justice” for survivors.
Committee member Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., echoed the calls in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, saying Andrew “should be called to testify.” No Republican on the committee has publicly asked Andrew to testify and no formal subpoena has been issued.
New emails between Andrew and Epstein released Friday in unsealed court documents have added to the scrutiny.
In April 2010, less than a year after Epstein’s release from prison for soliciting minors, Andrew wrote that it would be “nice to catch up in person.” Epstein had proposed that Andrew meet American banker Jes Staley in London, but Andrew responded that he would be out of the country and could “stop by” New York later that year.
“I’ll look and see if I can get a couple of days done before summer,” he wrote.
Andrew and Epstein were photographed together in New York’s Central Park in December 2010, a meeting that Andrew had previously said would end their friendship.
That account was called into question last month when the Mail on Sunday and The Sun on Sunday newspapers published another email reported to have been sent by Andrew to Epstein in 2011, not verified by NBC News.
“We are in this together,” the newspaper reported in the email. “Play a little sooner.”
Andrew, who just two weeks ago announced that he would renounce the use of his title as Duke of York, was on Thursday formally stripped of it, as well as his status as prince, and effectively evicted from the 30-bedroom mansion where he has lived for more than 20 years.
Pressure mounted following the posthumous publication of late Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, which details her accusations that Andrew had sexual relations with her on multiple occasions.
Andrew reached a legal settlement with Giuffre for an undisclosed amount in February 2022 after she filed a civil case against him in a New York court accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17 years old. He has repeatedly denied ever knowing her and previously denied that a photograph of the two of them is real.
Prince William will travel to Brazil next week for a ceremony to award his multimillion-dollar environmental prize, hoping to divert attention from his uncle Andrew and one of the most painful royal scandals in recent history.
The British heir will visit some of the most famous places in Rio de Janeiro in what will be his first trip to Latin America.
