A Royal Arrest and Global Fallout Over Epstein

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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily. In the weeks since the Justice Department released millions of documents in the Epstein files, executives have lost their companies, lawyers have resigned, but it was unclear who, if anyone, would face any kind of legal consequence. That changed on Thursday when Andrew Mountbatten, the former Prince Andrew, Duke of York, was arrested in England. But the former prince may never face legal accountability for many of the criminal allegations that have dogged him for years. Today, my colleagues Michael Shear and Nicholas Confessore explain why the prince was arrested, how the blast radius for this scandal has widened the and why to many people, consequences still feel so elusive. It's Friday, February 20th. So, Michael, we are here to talk to you today because it feels like arguably one of the biggest shoes to drop has happened in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And specifically, we're talking about Andrew Mountbatten, formerly known as Prince Andrew of the British Royal family. He was arrested. Tell us what happened and what he was arrested for.

0:33

You're right. It was really an explosive moment here in Britain where the public has been following Andrew's travails for a long time now. At 8:00 in the morning, police arrived at the Sandringham estate, which is a country estate favored by the King and many members of his family, and they arrested Andrew. They arrested the former prince, took him into custody under suspicion of what they called misconduct in public office.

1:57

And what does that mean?

2:25

What that basically means is that when you were serving in public office, you did something wrong. You broke the law as part of your duties, your official duties. Now, the police did not provide any details of the investigation, but the arrest came after reports suggested that Andrew may have shared confidential information with Mr. Epstein while serving as the British Trade Envoy, which he held from 2001 to 2011.

2:28

All of this feels kind of astonishing when you consider a couple of things. One, how long there have been accusations of sexual misconduct against former Prince Andrew, and number two, how long we've known that he's associated with Jeffrey Epstein, like the fact that he is being arrested for potentially leaking confidential information. That kind of feels almost like going after Al Capone for tax evasion.

2:56

You're totally right. It is pretty remarkable. And the allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior have been in the ether in the public consciousness for more than a decade. I mean, it dates back to when Virginia Giuffre accused Prince Andrew, at the time in 2015, of having been forced to have sex with him on three separate occasions in London, New York, and on Jeffrey Epstein's private island in the Caribbean between 2001 and 2002. That was when she was just 17 years old. So that's literally how long the public has been aware of the serious sexual allegations against him. It was four years later, in 2019, that Jeffrey Epstein was finally arrested in New York on sex trafficking charges that involved both the accusations by Virginia Giuffre, but of course, other women who then came forward. That case, as everyone knows now, didn't go forward because Jeffrey Epstein died in jail.

3:17

Right.

4:26

That same year that Jeffrey Epstein dies, Andrew decides that it's time to try to rehabilitate his image. There had been this photo, very famous photo that had been seen all over the world of him with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, his accuser. You know, he decides to sit down with an interviewer from the BBC to try to clear his name and sort of, once and for all, end all of this endless speculation about what he had or had not done.

4:27

I remember that interview because if I remember correctly, it had the exact opposite effect of what he was trying to do.

5:02

Yeah, it backfired spectacularly.

5:10

One of Epstein's accusers has made allegations against you.

5:12

If the point was for him to explain away the photo that everybody had seen, it didn't work at all.

5:16

Your response?

5:24

I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady.

5:25

He said he had no recollection of meeting her, but couldn't explain this photo that was taken with his arm around her waist.

5:28

There are a number of things that are wrong with that story, one of which is that is that I don't know where the bar is in tramps.

5:36

He seemed nervous throughout the interview. He disputed accounts that the interviewer offered about meeting Ms. Giuffre in a club in London.

5:46

She described dancing with you and you profusely sweating, and that she went on to have bath.

5:58

Possibly there's a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition, which is that I don't sweat or I didn't sweat at the time.

6:06

When the interview, asked about Virginia Giuffre's, claim that he had sweated profusely while they danced, he went on an odd tangent about how he couldn't have sweated while dancing with her because he had a medical condition that made that impossible.

6:20

Do I regret the fact that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming?

6:34

Yes, unbecoming.

6:41

He was a sex offender.

6:43

Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm being polite in the sense that he was a sex offender.

6:44

It was one of those interviews where by the end of it, people actually thought he was lying rather than telling the truth. And it became clear that the effort to rehabilitate his image, to clear his name, was. Had not worked at all.

6:49

Is there anything you feel has been left unsaid that you would like to say now?

7:04

No, I don't think so. I think you've probably dragged out most of.

7:11

The.

7:15

Most of what is required, and I'm truly grateful for the opportunity that you've given me to be able to discuss this with you.

7:15

Your Royal Highness, thank you.

7:24

Thank you very much indeed.

7:25

Because of the public outrage, both globally and especially here in the uk, Prince Andrew decided to step away from his royal duties, essentially saying that he was no longer gonna be as front and center the way the king and the princes normally are. And so that's where things stood for several years until 2025, Virginia Giuffre commits suicide, and her memoir is released posthumously by her family members. And in it, it portrays Andrew's behavior in a much more detailed and damning way. King Charles, at that point, strips the prince of his title. The Duke of York says he can't be called a prince anymore, and ultimately kicks the prince out of his home that he'd lived in on the property of Windsor castle for about 20 years.

7:27

Obviously, nobody wants to get kicked out of their home, but this is not exactly like he's being banished to Siberia.

8:22

No, absolutely. I mean, he was clearly embarrassed by all of the press, but he's still, at the end of the day, eighth in line to the throne. And the consequences were mostly social consequences, not anything else.

8:28

And then, of course, in January, the United States releases this enormous trove of files, 3 million files. Journalists all over the world have not even finished picking through these files. But what emerges very quickly are more damning details about. So walk us through what we have seen come out of those files so far.

8:40

Right. I think that, as you said, there were a lot of details about how close the two men were and the number of times that they were together, both at parties and other places. But I think the most damning thing was yet another photo, and this one was of Andrew appearing to kind of kneel over a woman who was lying on the floor. Her face is blacked out, so you can't see who it is, and it's hard to tell whether she was conscious or not. But that photo, like the first one so many years earlier, really has crystallized the sense of outrage over this idea that he was inappropriate with young women. And it led, for the first time to the King actually putting out a statement that directly commented on Andrew's behavior. It expressed what the King said was profound concern at the allegations which continue to come to light. And very importantly, said that if he was approached by the police, that, quote, we stand ready to support them, as you would expect. It really was, I think, the first moment that the prospect of some kind of criminal punishment for Andrew seemed more possible given the fact that the King was sort of opening the door to that idea.

8:59

But do the police need the King to open the door for them to launch any kind of investigation legally?

10:19

No, there's no question that the police can investigate, and they have the power to arrest who they want to arrest. But I think from the public relations perspective, after years in which the family seemed very much to be trying to protect Andrew, the fact that the King had promised to help the police if they came to him, that was significant.

10:25

I don't understand, though, if police don't need a green light from the royal family to conduct a criminal investigation, has there even been one before this? Given the fact that there have been criminal allegations against Andrew for years, and if there hasn't been one, do we know why there hasn't been one?

10:46

Look, I think that is one of the big questions. Why haven't police in Britain, but also in the United States, why haven't they been more aggressive in looking into the allegations and ultimately taking action? And I think part of the answer might be that despite the allegations that have been out there, the thing that has become really powerful is less the sort of raw evidence and more the publication of that evidence and the pressure that has come from that on prosecutors on the Royal family has really sort of been the thing that has driven the case forward more than the actual investigations from the authorities.

11:02

And we should note that the arrest of a former prince, if not a current prince, is still a monumentally huge deal to the British public.

11:40

Yes, absolutely. I mean, you have to think about it this way. The last time that a sitting member of the British royal family was arrested was in 1649, almost 400 years ago, King Charles I was arrested for treason in the middle of the English Civil War. At the time, that is 150 years before the United States was even around. That was the last time a member of the royal family was arrested.

11:49

And what kind of consequences does he face if convicted?

12:16

They're pretty serious. He hasn't been charged yet. But assuming he was charged and ultimately convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

12:19

Michael, I think this is only the third arrest total associated with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. There was Jeffrey Epstein, there was his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and now obviously, Andrew Mountbatten. And this arrest happened in England. And meanwhile in this country, the United States. The consequences that we have seen for people associated with Jeffrey Epstein who have come under suspicion have largely, if not entirely, fallen outside of the legal system. Why do you think that is?

12:28

Yeah, it's really interesting that part of what helps to explain, I think the arrest of former Prince Andrew is that he is one of the most high profile people in the land. And so I think, you know, the idea that he would ultimately become one of the first people to be actually prosecuted, arrested, and potentially charged is maybe on one level, not that surprising. I would also say that, you know, this country has a real media culture that involves tabloids. Reporters are very aggressive. They, they're like a dog with a bone. When they get into the middle of a scandal, they don't let go. And I think that all of the attention on the Epstein files underscores how hungry people are for accountability in this whole case and how much that demand for accountability exceeds what the legal system has delivered in the past several years.

13:00

Michael Scheer, thank you so much.

14:07

Absolutely happy to have been on. Thanks for having me.

14:09

We'll be right back.

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14:23

Nick, welcome to the Daily.

14:54

It's great to be here, Rachel.

14:55

So I just finished speaking with our colleague Michael Shear about the recent arrest of Andrew Mountbatten, the former Prince Andrew of England, and how this is really the first criminal consequence we have seen. Since of course, the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein, the conviction of his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. And what I want to talk to you about today is I want to focus on the fallout from the most recent batch of files that was released by the Justice Department in part because the consequences here seem to becoming harder and faster for people who have been implicated. And we're gonna talk about why that is. But first I just want you to explain to us what we have been seeing over the last few days and weeks.

14:57

So the Epstein files has turned every person who wants to be in the entire planet into a prosecutor with subpoena power. We are looking into the investigations files of the federal government for this high profile sex predator and all of his friends and all of his associates. And what we've seen is that as reporters and ordinary people are digging through these files, they are finding about his friendships with other prominent, powerful and wealthy people. And they are beginning to face consequences for their friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was long dead.

15:38

I have to say, every single day it feels like there is a new law firm partner, a new CEO, a new head of something who has lost their job or position because of what has come out in these files. The New York Times has even come out with a whole tracker basically to help us keep track of all of these different names. I want to talk about some of the most notable people to lose their jobs. Maybe we can start with Kathy Rummler, who was up until very recently, the general counsel for Goldman Sachs.

16:10

Kathy Rumler had always maintained that she had a strictly professional relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. She was a lawyer. And as we all know, lawyers sometimes represent unpopular or loathsome clients, of course. But what these emails show was that she was more than a lawyer. She was a friend, she was an intimate, she was a confidant. She discussed her dating life with him, he gave her gifts, she called him Uncle Jeffrey, she signed emails xo and she even gave him advice on how to handle questions about his sex crimes from the past.

16:38

And Goldman Sachs, to be clear, did not push her out of the firm. Presumably they were fine knowing that she had represented Jeffrey Epstein for the reasons that you articulated. But this idea that this would go farther sounds like that was what was untenable, unpalatable.

17:09

I think what's fascinating about this whole series of events with all these former Epstein friends is that we can never quite see inside these institutions to find out what was the breaking point.

17:24

Right.

17:34

And we know that, as you say, Goldman stood firm by her for many days. And it appeared that she was gonna stick it out. And then one day she decided, I'm gonna resign. I can't handle all the scrutiny, the constant drumbeat of stories. And the mechanism really is something that's hidden from us as to whose patience was worn out first.

17:35

Right. And for those reasons, I actually wanna talk about somebody else who's sort of similarly interesting, and that's Brad Karp, the former longtime chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss. He's really interesting in part because our audience might remember that he got a lot of flack a few months back when his firm made a deal with the Trump administration that in exchange for providing tens of millions of dollars in free legal advice, they would be perhaps taken off the target list of the law firms that the administration was going after. And people were furious about that. There were attorneys who left the firm. The firm got a ton of blowback, but he survived. And he did not survive what was in the Epstein files.

17:54

That's right. It's remarkable. What we saw in the Epstein files was, again, evidence of a friendly relationship with a known predator, a known sex offender. We saw that he went to a fancy dinner at Epstein's house. We saw that he even offered some legal opinions to Epstein about Epstein's plea deal. Right. The plea deal that put him in jail the first time for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

18:34

Right.

18:58

And so it seems that those details, unlike this deal with Trump that many saw as capitulation to a frivolous threat, were what pushed him over the edge and out of the chairmanship.

18:59

What do you make of these two cases? These two people, two lawyers, who had given different levels of legal advice, of course, but had also maintained a friendship with this man long after it was known that he was a sexual predator.

19:11

I think what makes these distinctive, and perhaps the reason why they could not withstand the revelations, is that it's one thing to advise a client who is a sex predator. It's a separate thing to be friends with somebody. You're chummy with them, you exhibit no judgment towards them at all. In the friendship realm, why are you friends with this guy? Why are you helping him figure out how to troubleshoot his legal problems that stem from soliciting a minor for prostitution? At what point, and this is just in the mind of the listener or the reader or the person, at what point did a bell go off in your head to say, perhaps I should not be so close to this guy? That is what I think was so toxic for these two people in their positions of trust at these two big institutions. Goldman Sachs, one of the nation's leading financial institutions, and Paul Weiss, a major law firm.

19:23

Right. And just to put a finer point on it, our legal system relies on the idea that everybody deserves a criminal defense. But if you're not even his attorney, this really just seems like a favor to your friend who you know is a sexual predator. When you have no evidence, you have not reviewed the case files, you don't know whether this guy is innocent as an attorney.

20:17

That's right. And if you add one more layer, part of the connection here is the relationship with Leon Black, the billionaire investor and work that Epstein did for Leon Black. So if you're Brad Karp, a person looking at all this is wondering, are you helping this sex predator because there's money in it for your firm because of these financial and professional relationships? Which in some ways, again, it's one thing if you're a defense lawyer.

20:35

Right. It's another thing.

21:04

And this is corporate law.

21:05

Right, Exactly. The last person I want to talk about is Casey Wasserman, who is an enormously influential figure in media and in entertainment. His talent agency represents some of the biggest names in sports and music, some of the biggest performers. He separately is helping to run the Olympics. Tell us what happened with him.

21:06

You know, I think he's in some ways the most interesting case in a way that perhaps reveals some of the fault lines around what we make of the fallout of Epstein. So you might ask, so what did he do with Epstein?

21:26

What did he do?

21:38

The answer, as far as we can say right now, is not much. In 2002 and 2003, two things happened. In 2002, Wasserman flew on Epstein's plane as part of a humanitarian trip with Bill Clinton. It appears he was part of Clinton's entourage taking a trip on Epstein's plane. And the second thing is that after that trip in 2003, he exchanged flirty emails with Glenn Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice.

21:41

So why are these years important? Because this is a few years before

22:10

Epstein gets arrested in Palm beach. And that was the first clear public sign of what Epstein was up to with girls and women. Right. Maxwell's role as Epstein's accomplice doesn't begin to come into focus until a few years after that. And she isn't convicted of a crime until 2021, almost two decades after she and Wasserman were emailing each other. And yet this month, after some details of those exchanges became public, Casey Wasserman announced that he would step down from and try to sell his own talent agency after some higher profile clients said they would sever ties with his firm.

22:14

And what do you make of that?

22:53

I think it shows that even people who are not accused of taking part in Epstein's crimes or even enabling them, can now face serious, life altering consequences just for having some association with with him.

22:55

You know what's really interesting, Nick? You and I were both at the epicenter of the Times's MeToo coverage. We were both investigating individuals and systems and companies that allowed people to get away with predatory criminal behavior in some cases for years without consequence. And I remember at some point, and I couldn't tell you when this would have happened, but at some point it felt like there was a bit of a shift. And it felt like that shift was that society was willing to mete out consequences for lesser and lesser bad behavior. And so therefore the blast radius was getting larger and larger. And like I said, I don't know when that happened, but with the Epstein files and the release of them, it feels like we are getting some inkling that that might be happening on an accelerated time frame.

23:15

I've spent months now thinking about and reporting on the network of power that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to operate.

24:08

It was vast.

24:14

Many men and women were culpable. But the case of Casey Wasserman focuses us on this question. How do we decide when somebody is part of that system of power, right? Is it anyone who had dinner with him after his first arrest? Is it anybody who ever met him, ever? How about someone who spent time with him before the public even knew about his crimes? These are the questions that we're all trying to assess.

24:16

Michael Shearer made the point to us earlier that people's hunger for accountability far outstrips what they feel they are getting from the legal system. Former Prince Andrew, for instance. That's only, I think, the third arrest that we have seen related to Jeffrey Epstein, besides Jeffrey Epstein himself, of course, and Ghisaine Maxwell. And I wonder if that helps to explain the public appetite for some kind of consequence like what we are seeing now a little bit regardless of what the people have actually done.

24:44

Look, there's a vacuum at the heart of this whole affair, which is that the principal person responsible for all of it has been dead for almost seven years.

25:15

Right?

25:26

He's gone. He can't explain anything. He can't connect any dots. He can't be tried. We cannot put him through the system of justice that we normally have to deal with this kind of thing. And what we're left with is a scandal that is like light arriving From a distant star, years after the fact, the after images of his life and his network and his connections in the past. And a lot of the people who are implicated in some way in his system of power and abuse did not do anything illegal.

25:27

Right.

26:09

Or if they arguably did, some of those people might have been hard to prosecute.

26:09

But that's similar to me too, we should point out. Right. A lot of the people who lost their positions were never indicted on any kind of criminal behavior. So in some ways, it actually feels quite similar.

26:14

Yeah. You know, I want to separate here. Clearly, like, when I'm reading these files, I see lots of evidence of Epstein's crimes, his trafficking over the years. But let's take this other bucket. People who were not directly involved in that, but had some social relationship with him, perhaps at a time when they should have known better or might have questioned why they were associating with somebody who had been convicted of soliciting a minor and in fact are now admitting in many cases I shouldn't have done that. And so they're guilty. Perhaps what we can call a social crime. We don't really have any agreed on framework for that. We don't have in this country anymore much of a shared moral framework, a shared understanding for what deserves shame. And what we're left with, from my point of view, is a kind of tribal revenge politics where you get in trouble for this stuff if your tribe gets mad about it, but if the other tribe is mad about it, you don't get in trouble.

26:24

It's interesting that you use the light metaphor because I think so much of the frustration around Epstein is the opacity, the fact that these files were so difficult to get that it took an act of Congress to get these files released.

27:28

The.

27:42

Even after these files came out, there were a whole bunch of redactions, and there are still so many swirling conspiracy theories about what is and is not included and what we don't know.

27:42

I find it remarkable. Rachel. There are emails I've read that at least outwardly, seem to be for men who are not victims. And of course, it's hard to know, but the redactions don't make any sense to me. In a lot of cases, there's obviously a lot of victims names and details that are being redacted, and that's appropriate. Of course, in a lot of cases, when you keep digging, you can find a second copy of the same email without the name redacted. But as you were saying, so much is opaque. And what is perplexing for a Lot of people who are reading these documents is that this Justice Department said we found no evidence of anything that would predicate an investigation for us. I am not a prosecutor, I'm not a lawyer, and I can't see behind those redactions when I read these documents. I find that puzzling and challenging. And even if they are right, even if I as a reporter could see behind all the redactions and come to the same conclusion they did, with some legal training, you begin to understand why this hunger still exists, right? This is still why this mystery, this suspicion, the who else is getting away with something? Why haven't they been punished? And I think to your point earlier, it just feeds this sense that the people who did bad things are getting away with it, even as simultaneously we see these dominoes falling. As we discussed at the top of

27:53

the program, I wanna bring this conversation back to where it began with former Prince Andrew and his arrest on Thursday, because I wondered whether just given everything that we've discussed, the news of that arrest, regardless of what it was for, might have struck some people as a surprise. Just given the fact that this is a person who had not faced any kind of legal scrutiny, legal consequences for years, and people might have thought he never would.

29:27

I think the former Prince Andrew is in some ways the exception that proves the rule. His public association with Epstein as a figure of scandal goes back to 2010. The story of their friendship and the scandal around it has been unfolding for 16 years. And he is just now coming under criminal investigation in his home country because of an unprecedented political alignment in this country that resulted in the release of all these documents that in turn told us about some other things he did that might be illegal in the UK and the fact that it took that long for him to face like a criminal consequence. Obviously he was stripped of his title before he fell out of favor, but the length of time before the justice system in his country caught up with him I think helps explain the pent up hunger and anger and frustration people have. And the reason why the consequences for some other figures who are perhaps less closely tied into his crimes has been severe and rapid. And yet at the same time, I think it also tells us a bit about how hard it is to reach a resolution on this. Because the man at the center of it all cannot be brought to justice. And there are so many questions we cannot answer right now that the survivors can't answer, that the public can answer, that the people in charge of law and order can't answer. And there's almost a sense that any form of justice for anybody connected to him is important and necessary because real justice feels so elusive.

29:55

Nick Confessori, thank you so much.

31:54

Thank you, Rachel.

31:56

We'll be right back.

32:16

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32:24

Here's what else you need to know today. The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez Durimer has been barred from the department's headquarters after at least two female staff members accused him of sexual assault, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by the New York Times. The women said Ms. Chavez Daremer's husband, Dr. Sean Daremer, had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department's building on Constitution Avenue. One of the incidents, the people said, was caught on security camera and as

32:55

Canada gets fresh skaters on the ice, the outlet pass for Keller and defenseman Vice Fools cuts to the net score. Megan Keller, the overtime hero United States Ridiculous.

33:27

The United States took the gold medal in women's hockey, defeating Canada in a two to one match that continued a year long winning streak for the American team.

33:44

Megan Keller lives it for Team USA.

33:53

Thursday's victory was the third time that the U.S. women's hockey team has won the gold medal, all coming against Canada.

33:58

The United States won gold in Nagano in 1998, the young Chang in 2018. Here in Milan, they complete the golden hat trick.

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Today's episode was produced by michael simon johnson, alex stern and shannon m. Lynn. It was edited by devin taylor and liz o'. Ballin. Contains music by alicia paul at YouTube and dan powell and was engineered by chris wood. That's it for the daily. I'm rachel abrams. See you on Sunday.

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