Prince Andrew admits to having been “foolish” over friendship with Jeffrey Epstein
They say: “There’s no fool like an old fool” and in allegedly admitting that his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein has been foolish, The Duke of York has shown himself to be exactly that.
Stuck, just like Epstein’s well known lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who himself faces similar claims from Virginia Roberts, between a rock and a hard place, a “source close to The Duke” told The Telegraph:
“It would be crass and disingenuous to suggest that he has been unaffected by this”.
“He is watching the news and reading the headlines and even though the friendship with Jeffrey Epstein was acknowledged as being unwise back in 2011, The Duke has clearly had a long time this week for the consequences of that friendship to further sink in. More than ever, he can see how foolish it was”.
“Clearly there is frustration on The Duke’s part. There is no immediate legal channel through which he is required or able to respond to the claims”.
“He hasn’t been accused by prosecutors of any crime, and of course, look at Alan Dershowitz, he is taking legal action against her lawyers and has petitioned to become a party in the case to say what he knows, but he isn’t the fifth in line to the throne of the UK”.
“What alternative does that leave him? He could come out and give an interview to fight it in the court of public opinion, but the denials have already been categorical and cover every detailed allegation that has been put to him”.
“He knows that anything he said would be picked apart and he is mindful that he has already got into unprecedented territory in terms of the statements made by Buckingham Palace [in which he denied having sex with Miss Roberts]”.
“If a stream of allegations appear and are answered point by point through the media, he knows that will only prolong and amplify a story that has been deeply uncomfortable for the Royal family”.
“There was a really good vibe about where life was heading, which is why it makes this all the more unfortunate. What has been lost in all of this is the fact that he and his team have worked genuinely hard since 2011 to think about what it was he was going to do”.
“Until this happened he had been very upbeat and enthusiastic about what he was doing and the feedback from the visits and partner organisations was extremely positive. Within the wider Royal household it was being acknowledged that he had moved in the right direction”.
The Duke, it also emerged this week, bought a seven-bedroom ski chalet in Verbier for around £13 million with his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, as a “family investment. That he now will have to endure months of speculation in a case that plainly is full of what Mary Beard rightly described as a mixture of “truths, mistruths and yet more mistruths” is plainly going to be “deeply uncomfortable”. If one good thing can come out of this, though, it is surely that this “old fool” might take stock and finally change his ways.
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