Democrats investigating Jeffrey Epstein have intensified their calls for Britain’s former Prince Andrew to answer questions about his links to the disgraced financier, days after King Charles stripped his younger brother of his title.
The calls for testimony from Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, as he is now known, came as new emails emerged showing he suggested a “catch-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.
Fellow committee member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., urged Andrew to “come and testify and tell us what you know” during a Friday interview, while Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said Andrew’s testimony might 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 Republicans on the committee have publicly called for Andrew to testify, and no formal subpoena has been issued.
New emails between Andrew and Epstein released on 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 “good to catch up in person.” Epstein had proposed that Andrew meet American banker Jes Staley in London, but Andrew replied that he would be out of the country and might “drop by” New York later in the year.
“I’ll look and see if I can make a couple of days before the summer,” he wrote.
Andrew and Epstein were pictured together in New York’s Central Park in December 2010, a meeting Andrew had previously said was to end their friendship.
That account was challenged 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 newspapers reported that the email read. “Play some more soon.”
Andrew, who just two weeks ago announced he would relinquish the use of his Duke of York title, was on Thursday formally stripped of it as well as his status as a prince, and effectively evicted from the 30-room 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 allegations that Andrew had sex 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 having met her and previously denied that a photograph of the two of them is real.
Prince William will head to Brazil next week for an award ceremony for his multimillion-dollar environmental prize, hoping to refocus attention away from his uncle Andrew and one of the most bruising royal scandals in recent history.
The British heir will visit some of Rio de Janeiro’s most famous landmarks on what will be his first Latin American trip.
