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A few days before Christmas 2010 an email popped into Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s inbox. It was from Prince Andrew, now Mountbatten-Windsor, wishing the financier a \u201cspectacular\u201d New Year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mountbatten-Windsor had visited Epstein in New York two weeks before, when a dinner had been arranged on his behalf with guests including Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi. He had claimed the purpose of the trip was to end his friendship with the registered sex offender, but the festive greeting tells another story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWishing you a wonderful Christmas and spectacular entry into 2011,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt was great to spend time with my US family. Looking forward to joining you all again soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Epstein, Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein at Princess Beatrice\u2019s 18th birthday party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, Mountbatten-Windsor sent another email to Epstein, attaching what he described as a \u201cconfidential brief\u201d on business opportunities in Afghanistan, likely to have been given to him in his work as a government trade envoy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In his Newsnight<\/i> interview in November 2019, Mountbatten-Windsor claimed he had severed links with Epstein on the trip to New York in early December 2010 and never had \u201cany contact with him from that day forward\u201d. These latest emails released by the US Department of Justice appear to demolish this claim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It also raises questions for Mountbatten-Windsor \u2013 and the royal family \u2013 about the information passed to Epstein during his work as trade envoy and the repeated hospitality offered at various royal residences to a convicted paedophile. The Observer<\/i> has established Epstein was even invited to dinner and drinks at St James\u2019s Palace in London in 2010 while under house arrest in the United States for procuring sex from a minor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mountbatten-Windsor has previously told how he met Epstein in 1999 through the financier\u2019s associate Ghislaine Maxwell. A picture taken that year shows Epstein and Maxwell relaxing at a log cabin at Balmoral, the Scottish home of the royal family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In June 2000 Epstein and Maxwell attended a Windsor Castle \u201cDance of the Decades\u201d event to mark four royal birthdays, including Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s 40th. Six months later they were invited by Mountbatten-Windsor to a shooting weekend at Sandringham, the royal estate in Norfolk. In August 2001 an email sent by someone who described himself as \u201cThe Invisible Man\u201d, believed to be Mountbatten-Windsor, to Ghislaine Maxwell stated: \u201cI am up here at Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family \u2026 Have you found me some inappropriate friends?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mountbatten-Windsor has described a friendship with Epstein which involved meeting him two or three times a year, sometimes staying at the financier\u2019s homes in New York and Florida. Juan Alessi, a former Epstein employee who managed the Palm Beach mansion, has claimed Mountbatten-Windsor spent weeks in a guest residence at the property and had daily massages. Mountbatten-Windsor has denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nNewsletters<\/h3>\n
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