Nothing has been as damaging for the British royal family as the unfortunate meeting of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein. Republican Thomas Massie and the Democrat Ro Khanna know this. In a press conference yesterday, they said they had been shown documents that have been otherwise redacted and withheld from the Epstein files. These documents included mention of girls as young as 9 years old.
Massie and Khanna are responsible for the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. They have said that the levels of redaction and secrecy are unacceptable, and that they will continue to challenge the Justice Department’s approach to the documents. And this, according to Khanna, is extremely bad news for the royals.
“I think this is the most vulnerable the British monarchy has ever been”, Khanna said. “They ought to ask the King and Queen questions and maybe this will be the end of the monarchy… if they don’t have answers, if they’re implicated in the Epstein class, it’s not a good look for the British monarchy.” Khanna has none of the reverence British politicians feel for the royal family. And he was suggesting that the lack of transparency extends to the whole of the monarchy, rather than simply its disgraced member.
Andrew has so far been reluctant to head to Congress to answer questions about precisely what he knew about Epstein and his crimes. This is clearly frustrating for Khanna and his colleagues: “Andrew needs to come before our committee and start answering questions.” The Democrat may be unimpressed by the noblesse oblige that some of his countrymen have traditionally paid to the royals, who remain beloved by many Americans from President Trump downwards. “I don’t think the appropriate punishment is you no longer get to be a prince,” he said. “There’s got to be more than that.”
There were moments when Khanna sounded almost like an old colonial revolutionary. “I don’t understand the British custom that someone’s asking the Queen a question and the Queen is offended that she’s being asked a question? I mean, come on!” It may be that his almost comically pugnacious, anti-monarchist views end up creating sympathy for the royals, rather than turning American popular opinion against Britain’s most famous export.
Yet even if a small percentage of Khanna’s hyperbole is accurate, and that the wider royal family is far more implicated in the Epstein scandal than previously thought, then this may prove to be an extremely dangerous moment for Windsors. So far, the king has managed to retain a good deal of public sympathy thanks to his swift and punitive actions towards his younger brother. But everyone at Buckingham Palace will be watching Massie and Khanna and fearing what is yet to be uncovered in the Epstein files.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source spectator.com ’
