I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven Am. We're in this together. We'll play some more soon. That's what Prince Andrew wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in twenty eleven, the day after the photo of Andrew with Virginia Guffray hit the papers. The email undercuts Andrew's claim that the two had cut ties in twenty ten, and it's part of a new stream of documents surfacing as US Congress releases tens of thousands of pages from the Epstein files, and
as the revelations about Prince Andrew keep coming. He's now dropped his titles and royal honors. Today reporter and author of The Lasting Calm witnessing the trial of Gilain Maxwell Lucia Osborne Crowley about the Prince's scandals and whether we should expect more to come out about the people in Epstein's orbit. It's Friday, October twenty four so, Lysia, right now, US Congress is pouring over this huge stash of emails related to Jeffrey Epstein. A number of those emails have
now been published in the British press. So to begin with, can you just outline to me what's in them? What they've revealed.
So we are seeing a number of developments at the moment, because, as you say, a Congress is going through their records about the investigations related to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of them have been published in the British press over the weekend. Those include really explosive allegations about Prince Andrew and his involvement. And then at the same time we also have this week the publication of Virginia Jeffrey's memoir about what she went through at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and allegedly
Prince Andrew. In terms of your question about the emails, there's a couple of really, really really important things that we've learned, particularly around Prince Andrew and Virginia Giffray. There's an email which seems to show Prince Andrew asking his close protection officer to investigate Virginia Giffray just after she had made allegations of sexual abuse against him. That's an incredibly serious thing. A close protection officer is at least
partly taxpayer funded. They are run by the police. The other really important thing that we learned in the email is that Prince Andrew has pretty clearly it seems lied to the public at least twice.
I'm just trying to understand. There's a photo inside Gelen Maxwell's house. Glen herself is in the background. Why would people not believe that you were there with her that night?
They might well wish to believe it, But the photograph is taken upstairs, and I don't think I ever went upstairs in Gallenne's house.
So in the interview, which I'm sure we all remember with Emily Matelist, he used the word categorically when he said that he had never met her.
You can say categorically that you don't recall meeting Virginia Roberts, dining with her, dancing with her at tramp or going on to have sex with her in a bedroom in a house in Belgravia.
I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened.
Categorically is a very strong word. And we now have an email from the time where it seems that he's corresponding with Jeffrey Epstein and he's saying he may have met her. The email says, quote categorical denial of sexual relations full stop. Possible that I met her in a group with others, and possible that there is a photograph.
We can to assume he knew that he wrote that email in twenty eleven saying he may have met her, and with that knowledge, he told the public and Emily Makee List categorically that he'd never met her.
And another thing that he also said in that interview was that he had ended the friendship with Epstein in twenty ten, but this email would suggest otherwise exactly.
So this is the second lie, might said.
Look, because of what has happened, I don't think it is appropriate that we should remain in contact, and by mutual agreement, during that walk in the park, we decided that we would part company and I left. I think it was the next day, and to this day I never had any contact with him from that day forward.
There's an email from the end of February twenty eleven which shows them in very close contact and says, you know, let's play together soon and stay in close touch. So again it's a lie. That email makes clear that there were no intentions of cutting off contact. He says, let's keep in close touch. Another huge revelation over the past few days is that there is another victim of Jeffrey Epstein, who he also introduced to Prince Andrew. So the mail
on Sunday chose not to name this victim. This again comes from this cash of emails that we are seeing coming out of Congress. There's an email sent on August eleventh, twenty ten. Jeffrey Epstein wrote, I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with. She will be in London twenty to twenty four. And then Prince Andrew responds, of course I'm in Geneva until the morning of the twenty second, but would be delighted to her.
So it seems incontrovertible that that is Epstein introducing someone to Prince Andrew for some reason. There's obviously nothing explicit in there about what the reason is, but it seems that the male on Sunday is saying that they know her to be a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein.
And there have already been significant consequences for Prince Andrew. Tell me about what's happened.
Yes, so he has quote unquote voluntarily given up some of his titles, most importantly his dukedom. A lot of people kind of say, oh, this is only symbolic, but symbols actually really do matter in these kinds of stories, because Buckingham Palace is not going to take decisions like this lightly. They have been trying to avoid dealing with
this scandal for a long time. So most importantly, the police over here, the MET, have said that they are actively investigating this allegation that he asked his personal protection officer to investigate Virginia Giffrey. That consequence, to me, I think is the most significant because they haven't actually brought a charge yet. But it's quite surprising for the MET to even talk about bringing a criminal charge against a
member of the royal family. You know. At first I thought, oh, maybe they'll be aiming the charge at the protection officer himself for herself, but it seems pretty clear that they are actually talking about maybe bringing a criminal charge against a member of the royal family, and that is a really significant step for a police force that is historically extremely conservative.
Coming up what's been revealed in Virginia Jeffrey's new memoir and Lutia, all of this is unfolding at the same time as Virginia Geoffrey's memoir It's called Nobody's Girl, is being released. So tell me a bit about the book and what's in it.
It's really so heartbreaking. And by that I mean both the book is heartbreaking and it's heartbreaking that we're reading it now without her here, and it is incredibly honest. It's raw. She says a number of times in the book like look, I know this is really hard to hear. Please stay with me, and then at one point she says, you probably need a breather. I do too, you know, after she's describing these horrific alleged acts of sexual abuse. It's so important for us to have that in her voice.
There are a number of reasons it's important to have it in her voice. The first is this kind of still very widely held belief that a significant number of women lie about right. It alludes to me why so many people believe these rape myths at all. However, it's much easier to believe those myths when they are a headline just you know, Virginia Gfrey accuses Prince Andrew of sexual abuse without very much detail. But it is very different when we have the whole story in her voice,
with that detail. And the second thing is that survivor testimony in detail. That's really important because those accused of these kinds of offenses. They know how important it is to hear from survivors. They really really rely on out of court settlements because what they get from that is they get insurance that the survivor will not be able to tell their story. And that's what Prince Andrew got twenty twenty two, and he and the powers paid a lot of money for that.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. So Virginia Defray took Prince Andrew to court a few years ago. So after reading her memoir, how should we understand that decision to sue? What was it that she was asking the court to recognize?
Yeah, well, I mean these passages are really interesting because what she got him to do was right, a public recognition of the harm that has been caused to her by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. Now that is not him saying that he did it. You know, his position
is still that he denies allegations of sexual abuse. But that document, along with the settlement, we don't see that in the legal world very often, and so to get a kind of statement like that was really really important, and it seems from the book was really really important to her because a lot of people and a lot of headlines understood that settlement to be some sort of retraction from her. But one thing that we really need to take away from this book is that she is
in no sense retracting any part of this allegation. She is saying this happened, and in fact, you know, here is everything I remember about.
It, and Lucia right now in the US Congress is going through all of these documents, thousands of them, emails, call lists, and they're being ready for public release. So should we expect more revelations to come to light about Epstein and about other people who were in his orbit.
Yes, absolutely, we will see more and more and more headlines which will represent a build up of evidence about Jeffrey, potentially more about Prince Andrew, potentially more about other associates as part of this sex trafficking ring. That really will change the course of this story. I think those documents have existed for a very long time, and you know, there is obviously a lot in there that people are
trying to hide. And so Virginia's memoir says that she wanted to name other people, other clients of Epstein's, and she wasn't able to because they were too powerful, And that exact thing happened to me. You know, I have a few names that I wanted to publish in my book, and I was told I couldn't. And maybe those names
are the same as Virginia's, maybe they're not. But what it seems like we are finally going to get is a lot of different documents that together paint a much more accurate picture of how serious this was, how widespread this was, and how many victims were involved.
And then there is the question of whether or not this ultimately leads to those victims getting justice because there are a lot of victims. There are a lot of women. I think the Justice Department says there's more than a thousand. So do you think that as this happens, we are getting closer to any kind of justice for them?
I really hope.
So.
I mean, I think it's really hard because there's a lot of things going on here in terms of justice in the criminal sense. The only way for that to happen is for the public authorities, the police or the FBI, to bring charges. I certainly think there is enough evidence to bring charges against people who have not been charged, and you know, at the moment, Gilaine Maxwell is in prison for sex trafficking to no one. But of course we are at a very particular time in US politics.
We're seeing Trump firing federal employees who are involved in Agile Nxwell trial, for example, So politically this government's justice department, it's hard to say with any confidence that they would have the political will to bring new charges. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong about that. There will be a point at which, if there is enough evidence out there, there will be so much pressure on them that they
will bring charges. And the end of the caveat is that it's a shame that, for example, the FBI is the main agency that would be investigating federal elements of these crimes. And a lot of the survivors that I talked to often are involved in a lawsuit against the FBI for not investigating Jeffrey Epstein even though the FBI were told that he was doing this in nineteen ninety five. So from a survivor's perspective, it's very hard to trust
the FBI to actually investigate this. But all credit to them for taking that huge step of suing the FBI, because hopefully that will mean there's now more pressure on them to not do the same thing again.
Well, it's going to be really interesting to see how all of this plays out. Lutia, thank you so.
Much for your time.
Thank you so much for having me.
Also in the news today, the National's Deputy leader, Kevin Hogan says the party has major reservations with the federal government's overhaul of environment laws. It comes as the Greens have doubled down on their criticism of the legislation, saying Labour's reforms weaken environmental protections, leaving Labor without an obvious
partner to pass the laws through the Senate. The Greens and environment and business groups have received extracts of the new legislation ahead of its introduction into Federal Parliament in the upcoming sitting fortnite and US President Donald Trump has announced sanctions targeting rushes to largest energy companies in a bid to pressure Vladmir Putin to agree to a peace
still in Ukraine. Trump has also defended his decision not to send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, stating it would take too long to train Ukraine's military in how to use them. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening,