Prince Andrew’s Royal Reckoning: The Epstein Ties You Didn't Know | Andrew Lownie

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They were doing all the editing and gallery books of S&S bought the book in the States. And they were meant to basically offset from the Collins edition. The agreement we sold the book, the book was sold on a finished manuscript. There was a little bit of editing to be done back in February. And then suddenly in May, I was actually on holiday in Berlin. S&S cancelled the contract without even going through the termination clause. They said the book was unpublishable. And since I won prizes for my books, the last two have been top 10 bestsellers. Collins were very happy with it. This was a little bit of a surprise. And I don't know what the background is, but suddenly weeks before the book was due to come out, I had no American publisher and I was forced to self-publish. And of course, if you do that, you're not going to get any support from any of the media in the States. I mean, this was my big breakout book for America. After 40 years of writing, and so it came as a bit of a shock. And so I've worked as an agent since 1985. I've been representing the interests of authors. I thought I needed to take a stand because I felt this was cavalier and casual. They, as I said, hadn't gone even through their own termination clause. They thought I'm just a small guy. They can do what they want. And so I pushed back and I took on lawyers and we are going to court in the autumn. Good for you. And we'll see what happens. And it's very interesting. You know, the depositions that they put forward this, they claim that I was uncooperative when in fact, I was prepared to pay for another writer to come in and change the book if they wanted. And change the book that you had written the whole thing on, you were going to give up that kind of creative license to make it happen. To make it happen. And, you know, I was desperate to really, I mean, I've been published in the States by St. Martin's and others, but the books hadn't really had the coverage I hoped. Yeah. Fascinating. The head of S&S got in touch with the editor and he said, didn't we buy this book? It's number one in Britain. And it's making waves. Prince Andrews had to basically being chucked out of the royal family because of this book. And we had it. What happened? Oh, Andrew Loney wouldn't cooperate, but don't worry. We're going to do, he's agreed to do the book with us, which I hadn't agreed to do. So a lot of lies from Simon & Schuster, which I think need to be exposed. Please subscribe to huge, huge help. Number two, if you'd like to join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes, you can join via the link in my description or in the pin comment below. And number three, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make content from the show and make money, you can join via the discord link in my description below. Absolutely. And when we can help do stuff like that here where people have been wrong, we love to do that. So you were saying, obviously, this is one that could really break through in America as well, people over here are at least very aware of, you know, some of our troublesome leadership as it relates to certain Epstein files and things like that. And obviously Prince Andrew from over there is someone at the middle of all of it. But, you know, by the way, we'll put the link to the book down below so you guys can all go check that out. But it's also got to be a fascinating experience to write about, I don't know if the proper word is like tragic character while he's still alive, like as a biographer. Well, it was the first time. Well, my books have always been written based on documents. I've never done a living person. I mean, I've done some people where there were people alive that I could talk to who knew them. But, you know, this is particularly, it's always difficult about the royals. There's a sort of merger around them and particularly around someone like Prince Andrew. No one wants to talk, no one wants to be associated with him. There's a huge deference towards the royal family. People feel they serve the crown, whether they're diplomats or in the service of the royal family. So it was, I had 3,000 people I approached and 2,700 didn't talk. But it is an interesting story because in some ways, you know, this was a man who was so proud and arrogant that he kind of brought a lot of the problems on himself. There were so many ways that he could have saved himself. And again, you know, giving that interview to Newsnight in November 2019 only encouraged Virginia Jeffrey to bring her case. It was kind of forgotten about until then. So he's kind of brought it on himself. He's kind of brought it on himself. He's brought it on other members of the royal family. You know, wider questions now being asked about royal accountability and privilege. And so they must be cursing him because, you know, so far they've got away with very little transparency, particularly on their finances. And he's opened up the whole can of worms here because of his behavior. And there's something kind of admirable almost about a guy who's just going to go down with the ship without doing anything. But it's part of his arrogance that somehow he feels he's entitled. And these are just little people. He can do what he wants. And we've only really had one moment where I felt I saw fear in his face. And that was that famous photograph taken on the night he came back from the police station in February 26. Can we pull that up, Dave? That's a great shot. But otherwise, I mean, even now he's ranting at people. He's blaming everyone else. He's fussing about whether he can go out riding or playing golf or where he's going to park his cars. There's no sense of any sort of remorse for the way he's been treated. And I think that's a really good point. He's a complete narcissist. He can only see things in terms of his own interests. And that's why there's no empathy for anyone else. Yeah, I, you know, we kind of fought a war over the whole like, king and queen thing over here. So it's not like in America, we're naturally fans of that. That said, I've always wondered how you could possibly turn out even remotely normal, whether that be like not a sociopath or not someone who is completely divorced from reality. When you were born into a society where you're not a sociopath, you're not a sociopath, you're not a sociopath, what is a very archaic system where you live in opulence everything's taken care of for you but you're also you have all this duty and you have to go around and do all these things because that's what we've always done you know do you think there that that people born in the modern royal family can possibly live any kind of semblance of like a normal lived human experience well i think you know prince william and catherine uh i mean clearly those who marry into our family have had a life before they do that i mean i think william particularly he's brought his children up to to try and have a normal upbringing and in some ways andrew did have uh he went off to boarding school i mean he wasn't at least educated at home like a lot of them he went into the rough and tumble of the navy so there were opportunities but you're absolutely right they're brought up in this echo chamber the only people who who kind of surround them are sycophants who tell them what they want to hear they tell them how wonderful they are as you say they're used to people bowing and scraping and providing everything they want and i think there's a further complication with people like andrew and harry who are second in effect second in line they're kind of the reserve if anything had happened for example to charles andrew would have been uh before 1982 uh and then after william was born he would have been regent until andrew william was 18. so and then of course they moved steadily down the pecking order uh and that's quite difficult to accept but other members of the royal family i mean princess anne and edward were born into the same background but they do have a strong sense of duty um so i think it's personality rather than actually positioning but there is um always this trope when we've seen it in the in the crown between public duty and private pleasure and the rogue royals the duke of windsor the harrys the andrews who kind of pushed that princess margaret who kind of feel that the the position is basically to have a good time and then there are others and prince philip is a good example the queen george vi who felt that the only way for the royal family to operate is because is through a strong sense of public service and that's what the public want that's why they're prepared to turn a blind eye sometimes to some of the royal behavior and the privileges and the deal is we'll pay huge sums for your security we'll allow you to live in palaces and to have a pretty good lifestyle but in return we want you to serve us and when that contract breaks down which it's broken down with uh certainly with harry and edward and edward and Harry, but also with Andrew and Fergie, then people begin to wonder, you know, what are we paying for? Why are we doing this? And that's when the trust and respect is broken. And one of the arguments that I and others who are supporters of the monarchy and want it to survive make is the need for it to reform, modernize, make itself fit for purpose in the 21st century and regain the trust and respect that it's lost through the activities of people like Andrew. What is the purpose of the monarchy to you? If it's done right. If it's done right, I think it has a terrific unifying power to bring people together, particularly in times of during the war, for example, national crisis, when they are, should be, you know, they are apolitical. They are people that can in some ways serve as an example to the rest of the country. And George V and VI recognize this. They're the sort of family of the nation. They set the example. They, you know, shouldn't be going off and having affairs and stuff. I mean, they do. But, and, and of course, a lot of that was protected because we just never heard about it. But they're meant to set an example to make us feel, to show us how to behave. It's almost like a religion. And then, of course, there's the soft power, which we saw with, with Charles and, and his talk to Congress. You know, a lot of the royal family have deployed and the way that Andrew was later deployed to do, for example, arms sales, to reach bits of, of, of other countries, which politicians can't reach because there is a respect for members of the royal family. So they do serve a purpose. And people love the pomp and the ceremony. And, you know, it is more than just a soap opera, but, but at the base of it, there has to be, they have to, to behave well and to have this tradition of public service. And in the end, it's, it's meant to try and make us all think we can behave well too, to set an example, encourage us to behave the same way. 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I'll see you in the next one. figurehead symbolic leader at that point is that fair to say and is that what exists today you ever feel exhausted all day even after a good night's sleep or like your stomach is holding on to more fat despite having good workouts, or even just feeling more mentally drained all day when you feel like you shouldn't be. None of it makes sense. You're doing everything right, but your body's not working like it's supposed to. Most guys often think these are just separate problems, but the truth is they're all linked to the same root issue, high cortisol. Cortisol is your body's stress hormone. It's supposed to spike when you're under pressure and then come back down. But with modern life features like screens, work deadlines, and finances, your cortisol is jacked 24-7. And When cortisol stays high, your body actually prioritizes stress hormones over testosterone production, which kills your energy, focus, sleep, and physical recovery all at the same time. 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That's men, go to mars.com, link in my description below, for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. Yes, it goes back to the Civil War. And we had this moment in Teregnum where Cromwell basically took over and the king went. And then it was kind of restored later on. And it's kind of evolved the whole time. So particularly, I think, after the First World War, I mean, clearly they were seen as kind of German family. They made it very clear that they were a British family. They took on the name of Windsor and dropped the Saxe-Coburg, Gotha. And increasingly, they've just been seen to be there to – there was a famous kind of political scientist called Badgett in the 19th century who said they're there to kind of inform, to listen, to give wise advice like an elder statesman, but they shouldn't really have any power. But the fact is they do have residual powers. There's something called King's and Prince's Consent, where they can actually shape legislation before it reaches the statute book that a lot of people don't know about. They do lobby, as we found with Charles in what were called the Spidery Letters, where he does lobby, or did as Prince of Wales, government departments to push through things that he felt were important, particularly issues on things like architecture. And that's kind of verboten. They're meant to be above politics. But, you know, there are ways that they steer things. You know, we know that they believe in keeping the four parts of the nation, so England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, together. They don't want that to break up. There was a moment with Scottish devolution and a referendum that Scotland might break off and, indeed, Ireland might eventually. And the Queen kind of nudged a few people and put the word out that actually she was not in favour of this. And people kind of listened to that. And then, of course, with Brexit, there's a big debate whether the Queen was actually a Brexiteer and wanted to see us break off links with Europe or actually wanted us to remain part of the European Union. And the jury's out on that. My own feeling is that she was in favor of – she's in favor of supranational organizations. I mean, she's a great supporter of the Commonwealth. And I think she would have been a supporter of the European Union. Well, unless David Icke is to believe, these are people still, right? They have flaws and they still have feelings and emotions. I know like one example that's always brought up is like the back and forth between Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth when they were prime minister and queen respectively. And like there are political disagreements that still occur behind the scenes under the tension of apoliticality, if you will. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the Queen was very, very supportive of the Commonwealth. That's kind of how she was defining her legacy. And there were some problems there with Thatcher, particularly about apartheid in South Africa. And then, of course, we had the Reagan's invasion of, gosh, what's the Caribbean island? Grenada? Grenada yeah and and clearly that was a that was a part of the Commonwealth and and there was a bit of tension there between America and the Queen so you know she did get involved but the problems we just don't know when she's got involved because all the papers have been closed since she came to the throne in 1952 so we just don't know what goes on behind the scenes all the papers relating to Andrew's time as a trade envoy remain closed when we have what's a public records act which says that all papers should be released after 20 years so a lot of the stuff when i talk to to uh what's called the sensitivity reviewers the people who basically decide where papers go in the archives so that everything basically on the royals gets sent to buckingham palace and gets locked in a room never to be seen again is there anyone in in the british government who can mandate things being seen if they're supposed to be seen after i think you said 20 years absolutely i mean and i mean it's part of the law so i mean the prime minister or one of the government ministers could easily say and this was a campaign that i've been pushing all the papers related to andrew as a trade envoy should be released under the 20 year rule so he became a trade envoy in 2001 and so the files up to 2006 should be released and that would be a very easy thing to do just to tell the the head of the foreign office the minister there and the minister in charge of business and trade could just say to records management this stuff should be in the in the public domain but they don't do so and there's still a deference from civil from civil servants and politicians so for example the money that we pay the royal family for their what they do the sovereign grant has tripled in the last few years even though there are fewer members of the royal family and they actually do less work how they do that well by being very very persuasive And it's pushed through by three people: the Keeper of the Privy Purse, who works for the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, and the Chancellor Exchequer. And this should have gone to Parliament, it should have been debated, and it was slipped through one afternoon with no one knowing about it. Which Prime Minister? You guys have had a lot of those in the last few years. Well, it was the few days when we had Keir Starmer, and what happens, of course, is these people then get rewarded. And I'm sure Keir Starmer will get some nice bauble as a result of doing their bidding. Yeah, that triple is a big number. It's a big number, and it's never discussed. I mean, one of the things, again, that people like me want is that the Crown, the royals, should be accountable to Parliament. I mean, everyone else is. It's the last protected institution where they basically can do what they want. And it's not just this money, which is now, I think, about £76 million a year. This doesn't include security, which goes through the police. It doesn't include some of the military staff, like the flights and the equeries, who work for the royal family, which goes through the Ministry of Defence. And none of these questions will be answered if you ask these departments. And then, of course, we had Andrew and his massages. And this stuff wasn't put in a special little file saying massages for Andrew. It was lost in general accounting. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. When an intruder approaches a home, they expect a camera. What they don't expect. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. Using smart AI cameras, live U.S.-based agents help deter intruders in under 30 seconds. Don't just record a break-in. Stop it from ever happening. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at SimpliSafe.com slash Spotify. 30 seconds response time requires monitoring plan with outdoor protection starting at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. So they know they're going to get away. General accounting. Yep. Yep. They know they're going to get away with anything they want. And so, of course, that makes them feel invincible. And that's why they feel they can do what they want. That's very New York Italian. Lost in general accounting. It's always a good place to put massages, I find. Yeah. What? So the massages you're referring to, I mean, we've got to be careful with that in here because that can mean a few different things based on his relationships. Are you talking about stuff that's related to Epstein or is this entirely separate? No. These are sort of massages that Epstein gave, happy ending ones. These are ones with escorts. Oh. And the taxpayer was paying, British taxpayer was paying for it. And given the number of massages, that was quite a big bill. I'll say. Yeah. Now, Queen Elizabeth obviously lived until, I think, 2022, September, something like that. She was on the throne for effectively 70 years at that point. And that was like the longest reign since Victoria. Victoria, right? Longer than Victoria. Yeah. I mean, no one is, I think, ever going to beat that because, I mean, she came to the throne as a very young woman. Right. And she lived, I mean, she could have gone to over 100 like her mother, but she didn't do badly. I think 96. No matter what you think of her, woman lived a very full life. I mean, she saw a lot of things in her years for sure. Like you said, she had to take over young when her father died. But, you know, it's got to be a very kind of unprecedented. psychological dynamic to have the children, she had four of them, to where the wait for power is that long. And that is supposed to, for someone like now King Charles, that's supposed to be his entire life's purpose that he's taught from a young age. And then, as you alluded to earlier, someone like Andrew, who's already spent so much time as technically like the second in line, the more and more years to go by while his mom's on the throne, he's fallen to fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. And again, I don't know. I got to imagine that has a, especially for someone who's predisposed to being a sociopath that has quite a psychological effect on his purpose over the years and maybe makes him feel even more invincible. And for lack of a better way of putting it, like, fuck it, I'll do what I want. Yes. I think there was an element of that. I mean, I think he was always very jealous of Charles. He didn't think Charles, he felt Charles was weak and that he could do a better job. And Fergie was getting psychics telling her that Charles would die. He would die in a skiing accident, which, in fact, he almost did. Almost did, yeah. And if that had happened, then Andrew would have come in as regent. And, I mean, we've got to remember that if William's family are all killed in an air crash together, we're going to get King Harry. So, I mean, there's a big debate in Britain at the moment about the line of succession, whether Harry and his family should be removed and Andrew and his family should be removed because we have this extraordinary situation. Eugenie, the daughter of Andrew, has just had a third child and that's bumped Prince Edward, who's a working royal. Well, further down, Anne, further down the line of succession. But I think you're absolutely right that no one knows who, you know, Ernest Brooksbank is or Athena Motsi-Mapeli, but they're actually higher up in terms of the order of succession than people like Princess Anne and Prince Edward. Who are they? They're the grandchildren of Prince Andrew. But I think there is a strong sense of actually why should I care because, you know, I'm not going to get it now. I can do what I want. And actually what Andrew was doing was he was basically his ambitions were now invested in his children. So both Beatrice's elder daughter and Eugenie were given police protection at huge public costs long after there was any risk to them. I mean, they were basically on their year off from school. They were just going in and out of nightclubs. There were policemen, dozens of policemen guarding them, having to accompany them around the world and just basically drive them home from the nightclub. And Andrew was keen that they should inherit a title, which, of course, you can only inherit titles through the mail. So he was really keen. I'm sorry, you can only inherit titles through the mail? Through the mail side. So we have mail. That has changed recently. But even in the aristocracy, all the titles go through the mail. So you can have five daughters and none of them are going to inherit. It's going to be a distant cousin who's a male. And he tried to change those rules so his daughter could inherit. He was very keen to use his time as a trade envoy to build contacts for them, business contacts, particularly in the Middle East. And so he took them on these taxpayer-funded trips secretly to get stuff. They're not working royals. They have free accommodation in royal palaces. So basically, the deal he did, I think, with Charles, and certainly when his mother was alive with his mother, was basically, OK, I'll accept that my days are over in terms of what I can do. But I'm not going to do that. I want my daughters to get all the benefits of being royals without any of the responsibilities. Why was Andrew his mom's favorite? Did we ever figure that out? Well, it's a really good question. I think he was very good. He was very attentive to her. I mean, the others had families. He was a divorced man on his own. He used to go and see her a lot. He lived quite close by. Royal Lodge is literally only a few miles from Windsor. Royal Lodge? Royal Lodge was the home that he had, that he inherited. In fact, from the queen mother after she died 25 years ago. So that would be Elizabeth's mom. So Elizabeth's mother, yes, went to live in Royal Lodge. But Royal Lodge had very strong royal associations. It's where the queen grew up before she inherited the throne as a child. And it's where her father, the previous Duke of York, had lived. Traditionally, the second child of the monarch is called the Duke of York. And so it was. It had a particular sort of poignancy for the queen. But it's a good question. I think, you know, Andrew was boisterous. He was part of the second family, which he had more time for. He's 10 years younger than Anne. And, you know, in all families, there's often a favorite. And he was the favorite. When I talked to some people, their argument was he was the most vulnerable. And therefore, she was very protective of him. Most vulnerable. Most vulnerable because he was. We think that he had mental health problems. Has mental health problems. There's something. He's somewhere on the spectrum. Yeah, for sure. And therefore, she felt that, you know, the others could take care of themselves. So who knows? She never talked about it. But, I mean, each time there was some new scandal with Andrew, particularly with Epstein, instead of kind of distancing herself, she kind of threw a protective arm around him, sat up beside her as they drove to church. Gave him some new honor. Sending out the signal that she basically had complete faith in him. And began to think, well, maybe she knows something we don't know. Maybe he's innocent. Maybe this has all been cooked up. And so he was protected. And he was protected by her. He's protected by his brother, the king, now. They've known about Andrew for 25 years. They were fed information about Epstein and his activities years ago. And instead of basically taking. I mean, forcing him out of his job, as a trade envoy, disciplining him, doing internal reports, they did absolutely nothing. Peter Express took more trouble over the stuff that Andrew was doing than the royal family. Who did? Well, Peter Express, you may remember, was when Andrew did his interview with Newsnight in November 2019. I let the side down one. He's the one. Yeah, exactly. Well, he's the one who had a litany of lies. And one of the lies was, I couldn't possibly be in a nightclub late one night. because I was at a party 30 miles outside London. at this Pizza Express in Woking, which is a town, let's just say, just outside London. Now, it's very easy to get up from Woking to London, you know, in a matter of an hour, particularly if you're a police escort and you're just zooming through the traffic. But, of course, no one could remember anyone who worked. I mean, this is what Pizza Express were investigating. They talked to members of staff. Was he here? Is this something we've missed? And no one could remember him being at being a birthday party there. The children at the birthday party couldn't remember. The staff at his home in Windsor couldn't remember him coming home, whether he came home that night or not. And the police protection officer who knew that night he'd gone back to Buckingham Palace. This night was, of course, when he slept with Virginia Giffray. And all the evidence pointed to him going back to Buckingham Palace that night. Buckingham Palace said that this material is closed. The logs of him going into the palace are part of national security. And then when the police protection officer persisted, saying this is something that needs to be released under my data protection, they said, well, actually, these logs are being destroyed. And, of course, it's very easy. A lot of the stuff's being destroyed. Just getting rid of the records so that no one will ever know. Exactly. And that's what they've done for a long time. So, I mean, Prince Philip, who I'm doing a book on at the moment, he so-called arranged his papers for the last few years of his life. Huge bonfires went on. And Princess Victoria's daughter. The Queen's papers were sorted out, not by historians, but by her valet. Princess Margaret's papers were, sorry, Queen Mother's papers were destroyed by Princess Margaret. Again, big bonfires. And that's the way we deal with it in Britain. In Ireland, they throw it into the harbor, and often it bobs up against. But in Britain, we put them into incinerators. Listen up, fellas. Fall is here. Football is back. And that means game day meals, Sunday hosting, and a lot more time in the kitchen. Whether you're making burgers before kickoff, cooking crack for the neighborhood, or firing up breakfast before a full day of games, your cookware matters. Because when people are coming over, the last thing you want is food sticking, pans burning, uneven heat, or clean up turning into a full contact sport. That's where my friends at Hexclad come in. Hexclad completely changed the game by combining the performance of stainless steel with the convenience of nonstick all in one pan. Most cookware forces you to choose. Hexclad gives you both. Hexclad's 12-piece set gives you everything you need for hosting at home, family dinners, or just making better meals during the week. 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H-E-X-C-L-A-D.com slash julian. Link in my description below. And make sure you let them know that we sent you. These files that are being created, you know, I'm trying to picture in my head all of what this could be. Obviously, if they're at an official government meeting where minutes are taken, as it normally would be even for regular government, that makes sense to me. But, you know, you talk about like the Queen Mother's files being deleted. I know we later found out that she had a couple siblings, I think it was. That were very mentally challenged. Cousins. Right, cousins that were hidden. Or nieces, actually. Sorry, nieces. That's right. So they were hidden because they were afraid that that was going to be a bloodline problem if they were shown out. So did someone like write that down at some point? She has a niece at whatever. And that's the kind of thing they burned? Absolutely. And also with the nieces, they told all the reference books that they died in 1941 when actually they lived on until the 1980s. So not only did they put them into mental homes, they did the same with George V's son, Prince John. George V was in power during like World War I? Yes. So he was 1910 to 1935. And his eldest son had epilepsy and basically died at age of 13. In fact, he was put in the house where Prince Andrew is now living in Marsh Farm. Yeah, we have that up right here. Wood Farm. Well, this was the first one. I'm sorry. Yes, he was put into Wood Farm where he was first of all sent. So this was Royal Lodge right here? Royal Lodge is the one on the right, which you can see is a pretty big house for one man on his own. And then his wife had a little wing in the corner. Oh, she had her own little wing. Yeah, she loved it because, of course, she had all the royal chefs who were producing food for her. She had her laundry done for her. And people still thought she was part of the royal family. They'd been divorced for about 40 years. Oh, they were living in there together when they were divorced. Yeah, yeah. And, of course, she kept her title. In fact, she was meant to have lost her title, but she kept using her title. So everyone in America thought she was part of the royal family. And she kind of yo-yoed. So they invited her to Christmas at Sandringham. She sat in the royal box. She was invited to Ascot. So one moment she was kind of cast adrift. And then as soon as Prince Philip, who had got the measure of her, died, Charles kind of brought her back within the fall. Prince Philip couldn't stand her. And, I mean, he would literally. You're talking about Fergie, obviously. Fergie. And literally in his 80s, he would kind of vault over sofas in order to get out of her room before she appeared. In his 80s, he was jumping over sofas? Yeah. He was like that, huh? He was a fit old man. Good for him. I bet you there's something there with his unseen backstory as well. There are a lot of mistresses. Yeah. There are a lot of women. Those are all burnt papers. That's what I'm going to start using. We burnt the papers. That's good. Yeah, that's good. But you were talking about. You mentioned something like 10 minutes ago about how, in your estimation, King Charles is even protecting Andrew. And some of the. I could imagine some of it is for familial, you know, I guess, reputation. But some of that is surprising to me because what a lot of reports have been is that he can't stand Andrew and he can't stand the embarrassment he's brought on the family. So. At this point, even after all we now know that's been exposed, you still say he is taking active measures to protect him. Absolutely. And, I mean, you would think that. I think this is William's argument. You know, clean out the stables. We want a clean slate. And, in fact, you know, there will be more embarrassing revelations. I mean, there's still three million pages of Epstein stuff that could be released apart from depositions from victims. But, you know, basically own up to the fact that you guys have. You know, we've turned. You know, we've turned a blind eye to him. We paid off Virginia Jeffrey, et cetera. But, you know, we now really are helping the police for their inquiries. But, you know, I talk to police protection officers and they've been reminded of their obligations of confidentiality. Civil servants have been reminded about their pensions. So, on one hand, the king is saying, yeah, the law must take its course and we'll do everything possible to help them. And, on the other, I'm hearing that people. They're saying, look, don't talk to anyone. You know, we can keep the lid on this. And, you know, there's. They should have been dealing with this years ago. I mean, stories about Andrew's bad behavior have been in the press for 40 years. When Fergie was caught on film selling access to Andrew in 2010, at the time as a trade envoy, he should have been sacked. He continued to be a trade envoy for another year and actually to do trips on behalf of the government for years afterwards. There was a famous case in the High Court in 2022 where Andrew. The York family were. It was revealed. It had been paid. 1.3 million pounds by, basically, an embezzler. By an embezzler? Yeah. There was a separate court where a guy embezzled money from a Turkish millionaires. But, in the course of this case, it was revealed that he had paid the Yorks 1.3 million pounds. 750 to Andrew, 250 to Sarah, and the rest to one of the daughters, which they couldn't explain. And, again, that would have been a red flag. You know, something should have been done. We know that 33. 33,000 emails were sent to Charles six years ago, detailing some of Andrew's criminal activity as a trade envoy. 33,000? Yeah. And that material is still not being passed. They sat in them, did nothing about them, and that material is not being passed to law enforcement. So, yeah. And, I mean, we know that, for example, with ABC, they went to the royal family. They said, we want to do a program on Andrew and Virginia Giffray. We found out all sorts of things about him. The royal family said, if you run this program, you'll never again get access to the royal family. And ABC vowed out. I know from my research that the royal family would deny stories that were true. They would threaten legal action with stories that were true. They would use a mixture of patronage and pressure to stop people reporting on stories. They'd brief against people. They would reward people for supporting. them. So I talk in the book about how how a lot of journalists basically shied away from writing about andrew and jiffray because they realized they would they would be penalized if they did so and they basically did their bidding and that's how the system works um no one wants to be outside the magic circle and so when people like me come along and say hey this is actually what's really happened they do everything to i mean whether it's using bots on twitter briefing against you when um wait the royal family's using bots on twitter yeah they i was told that a saudi billionaire had given fergie uh and andrew money to try and discredit me that's who does it that's the saudi's got a hell of a bot farm over there so yeah so it's you know there are ways of doing it but you asked your question why does charles stand by him when he doesn't doesn't like him but it's exactly why uh the duke of uh windsor so , you know one of my previous books i showed that he was a nazi supporter and churchill and the british establishment uh prevented the release of german documents which revealed this after the war not because they didn't think he was of adam but because this would be too embarrassing if the stuff came out and that's the problem with with andrew instead of accepting that look we need to distance ourselves it's it's you know we we don't want to if we cover it if we cover it we're going to be able to cover it but we're going to have to do the cover-up uh and all my books in effect are about cover-ups and the one with andrew is they thought they'd get away with it uh even when um my book came out last last august uh and there was plenty of material there you know to bring charges against him for leaking confidential information for fraud for breaking the official secrets act nothing happened but where they got caught out was the transparency act and when epstein revelations began to come out they were they began to be released last december this holiday all plans even unlimited are just 15 a month a holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song like all i want right okay we can afford that you don't forget the music budget we're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain give it a try at mintmobile.com switch upfront payment of forty five dollars for three months ninety dollars for six months or 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra new customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms carhartt's holiday gift guides were built in collaboration with the greatest gift giver of all time santa claus himself old st nick counts on carhartt's durable gear to have his back through rain sleep and snow on the biggest night of the year because when everyone's counting on you to do your job what else would you wear to work tap the banner to grab a gift for every hard-working person on your holiday shopping list or head to carhartt.com the game was up for them they suddenly realized that this here it was in black and white they could no longer say well andrew lenny makes this stuff up his you know sources are unverified he's a closet marxist republican you're a closet marxist you were actually an open i mean they struck me as a real stalin yeah well you should see that you know i i'm you know i'm out there on the barricades every saturday afternoon that's right he had a hammer and sickle you just put it away so um uh and that's what they do of course that's what they don't like about me because you know i i'm not a marxist i'm a former conservative party candidate uh i'm uh uh got a doctorate you know i i was an academic um you know they can they can dismiss the tabloid journalists it's much more difficult to dismiss someone who footnotes everything everything's verified double sourcing i only use 10 of my material i have i've had nine times 10 times as much material i could use which just couldn't be stood up so for example for andrew or just in general just in general just in general so and one of the great things when the epstein files came out everyone was saying you know how can we trust this guy you know and then the epstein stuff came out and it just backed up everything i said hey guys if you haven't already subscribed please hit that subscribe button it's a huge huge help thank you so that was really gratifying um and that kind of has led to the snowballing it led to the fact that the royal family had to distance themselves led to the heckling of charles now when he goes out everyone's saying what did you know when did you know it what did you do about it and those are questions he's not answering and people saying why aren't you answering them doesn't he still have cancer too is that yes i mean you know i mean it is a tragedy you're absolutely right you know he's he's basically being prince of wales since since since 1952 70 years so he's never there's never going to be a prince of wales who's had such a long apprenticeship and at just the time when most people retiring he's suddenly having to take on the job he takes on the job uh at a time when his mum's died he never quite knows when it's going to happen it was quite sudden uh and um he didn't put the pillow over well they had they did kill george v they they hastened his death so that he made the headlines one morning um oh they did yeah so can you enlighten me on that so yeah well i mean the the queen the the the royal doctor uh a man orson went to the royal family and said um uh he's basically he's gonna die and he can uh die a bit later on and he's gonna make the afternoon papers but we think it'll look better if he's in the morning papers so they gave him a little lethal con so we had we had a sister dying in britain long before we debated it that's great so so they they're not beyond knocking off their relations and maybe that's what they should have done with andrew that would have solved a few problems well that is not to stick our tinfoil hat on too much here but that is the thing i keep thinking about because ever since he did the aforementioned interview in 2019 that where he said i put the side down i also don't sweat and it was just a disaster class for however long that was i kept watching this and i'm like you know how does this guy not die in his sleep how you know what i mean and and i don't think that should happen obviously like i'd rather see justice and everything, but he's such a PR liability that he threatens such a large historical establishment that you would just think they'd be like, all right, Jim, you know, put him out of his misery. Get Dawson. So yeah, well, with Edward VIII, they did want to get rid of him. So they encouraged him to take up any dangerous sport he wanted. He was very keen on steeplechasing. They thought that was a great idea. But they did. When the book came out, they were putting up the line that Andrew was suitable. When your book came out. Yeah. And that was quite clever because the publisher said, look, you know, if we have blood in our hands, we've got to be careful. We've got to rein back the publicity. Actually, they didn't say he was suitable. They said he was on watch. Now you can be on watch without being. Now I then talked to my source and he said, look, the guy is as arrogant and unrepentant as ever. This guy's not on watch. So but that would be a very convenient way of him, you know, sorting him out. And I think, you know, that he must be worried. I mean, in the way that Ghislaine is worried, a lot of people involved in this story have died in mysterious circumstances. I mean, it's a big debate about Epstein's death. Daniel Sead, who was one of the people who was involved in this case, has died in slightly mysterious circumstances. Jean Brunel, who was supplying a lot of the girls, a French model owner, died in prison on just like Epstein. No evidence of any tendencies before. Virginia Giffray died of suicide. Again, we have no coroner's report. We don't even know how she died. There are conflicting reports whether she shot herself or hung herself. And I think there's a list of about 20 people whose deaths are slightly unexplained who are involved in this case. And Andrew must worry that it's not the royal family. You're going to knock him off. It's someone connected with the Epstein story because he knows where all the bodies are buried. Absolutely. As does Fergie. I mean, you know, Fergie was the more numbers for Fergie in the Epstein little black book than for Andrew. I think that in fact, it was Fergie who introduced Epstein to Andrew. That relationship with Epstein goes back much earlier than people realize. I mean, one of the lies in the Newsnight interview was that they only met the late 90s. Alastair Watson, who was the first to die, was the first to die. Andrew's private secretary wrote to the Times and said it was the early 1990s. And I've got evidence that takes them back to the 1980s. But Fergie must be worried. I mean, there she is. She's refusing to give evidence to the Senate. She's worried about coming back to Britain in case she's arrested as a person of material interest. And yet there she is trying to do a deal with Netflix. But yeah, I mean, there must be a worry that, you know, it would be very convenient of a person of material interest. And yet there must be a worry that, you know, it would be very convenient of a person of material interest. And yet there must be a worry that, you know, Epstein's houses were filled with big pictures of some of the girls who were abused. There's no way you could go to this house and not see the very sexualized nature of these houses. That's right. That's the thing that really strikes me. I had a guy sitting in that seat three years ago, who I knew, I got connected to him. And I knew he had known Epstein, and I did ask him about it too, in that episode. But we later found out that when the files were released, he was on like 7500 emails. and in a court of law just saying you're on 7500 emails with someone is not enough to convict you of something if you know what i mean however when you're on that many emails with someone over that many years and you're around them that much and visiting with them that much and going to places as you just laid out that much and prince andrew is obviously no different when it comes to his relationship with jeffrey epstein fergie as well there's no way you don't know there's no way you didn't see something and go you know also when you're lying about it and then you're shown to have lied about it so in that news night interview he said he only met epstein a few times and they cut off contact in december 2010 and yet uh i mean when you interview the butler in palm beach at the home he says andrew would come stay for weeks i talked to someone who said that that andrew and fergie stayed so often at the house in 71st street that they had their own suite of rooms called the britannia suite um we know now from the uh email correspondence that andrew was in touch with him i think uh almost to to the death and uh in august to 19 fergie claimed that she cut off links in in the spring of 2011 and yet i have a woman i quote in the book called claudine prapst who lived by the east 66th uh block of flats were owned by uh mark epstein but which andrew sorry which um uh jeffrey used to house some of the girls and the pilots and stuff and fergie used to stay there on a regular basis way after this to 2014 claudine perhaps says that she would see fergie coming out of the building she knew fergie was there because the doorman was in their full regalia she'd go and chat to the to the doorman and they'd say yeah fergie's duchess of york is staying here so really obvious lies and when you're telling lies you know like what are you covering up um but yeah i mean i think and and but the problem is so much of the stuff has been destroyed you know there were deals done with some of the co-conspirators for material not to be released um a lot of the stuff is just not appeared i mean i mentioned the fact that we've got millions of pages that haven't been released six million pages we know uh could have been released uh and they kind of hide behind it and say we're protecting victims but actually they released the names of the victims and they posted out the names of some of the people involved that's right it's disgusting and you know so there's there's very obviously been been a cover-up here and i think the really worrying thing is if this material has been destroyed you know we've got people like pam bondy talking about what was there we just need to wait for some whistleblower fbi agents because these people are on overtime uh hundreds of them uh taking stuff out yeah the fbi unfortunately you know in recent american history and talking to guys i know who have left the fbi over the past decade there's just elements of it where there's some real rot yeah and so not to be cynical but i really wonder if you're ever going to get any sort of real whistle blowing out of there from the people that would have handled that stuff well i mean i was involved with with john boomer who was an fbi agent who what a name a great name well i recommend a substack and he's now he was trying to get a book but he had all sorts of stuff for example about rudy giuliano and what he was up to links with the russians uh the corruption that was going on in new york city trump of course uh and they really came after him and made life very difficult and um but he is now i mean the great thing with things like substack is it's the you know much much harder to come after people and clearly trump has tried to do that with michael wolf and others but i noticed that um there's been an fbi agent who was an intelligence writer uh who has a substack called spy talk and substack actually have a a fund and they have lawyers who work pro bono to um uh to to to reject what we call these slaps oh that's cool substack's doing that substack is doing that and we certainly have in britain i'm a trustee of a charity and we give money to an organization which um works with lawyers to work pro bono to support um writers who are basically are have this what we call lawfare so these are strategic um law lawsuits from what they call anyway it's a way that basically very powerful people and a lot of russian oligarchs have used them to try and suppress free speech uh and particularly from journalists and them reporting on things by tying them up in in expensive litigation uh and the only way sometimes to deal with this is is is by having good pro bono lawyers to respond yeah and shout out to those people who do that too because you're absolutely right that is you know i'll speak from america's perspective here i know more about the the system here like i think we have a lot of great things in our system but it's not without its flaws for sure and one glaring flaw that has existed forever is the ability of being able to buy people's silence through as you said lawfare where you just put them into hearing after hearing i've had it happen to friends over like stuff that's not public you know of public interest as a story where they just get in some sort of disagreement with someone and the other person has a lot more moolah and then they just keep keep pushing it to where they gotta say all right i have to settle this i can't afford it anymore well that's exactly what hopper collins my publishers did when uh that i had to take out two two one lines from from the book what were those uh one line was about melania being introduced to trump through epstein and i said it was a claim that epstein had made didn't um but um they just uh turned over immediately and said you know we just need to just take this line out uh and um and funnily enough um i mean that's clearly i wasn't the only person who said that michael wolf has said it hunter biden has said it appears in the the epstein revelations but funnily enough i was in um uh the hamptons uh literally a few days ago and sat beside a diplomat and i mentioned this and the diplomat said well when i was in milan it's very well known that milania was a high-class hooker um so you know that's trying to shut the thing down when was that uh when was she in milan uh-huh i don't know i mean whenever the sky was there i mean but clearly before she when she came to out of slovenia i think yeah we like to say lady of the night here in america lady of the night we're more respectful okay said nobody ever so i mean it's very well known i mean um uh and you know lots and lots of those stories um uh were were um i can't wait till we get a cease and desist on this one well the other one the other one they just took out voluntarily and this was um this came from a diplomat in the consulate in new york and he said he went to a meeting between uh trump and uh andrew and all they were talking about was um the turnberry and the the golf course uh because of course uh up in scotland but the other thing he said was they were swapping lists of um masseurs which were the best lists of masseurs uh and talking i mean with my language about pussy and of course this is exactly the sort of language that trump uses um and for for good measure they took that out um but interestingly enough that that diplomat um uh said that for the payback he would go on the record but by that stage the line had been taken out um by by harper collins and that no one had complained about that line but they just took it out for good measure took it out for good measure but you know we've seen this you know with trump with so many people i mean they've tried one of the things i found when i was trying to find a publicist for uh my my book in america they said well all the big morning shows are not going to report in your book because you've been critical of trump uh so forget about it um and that may be another reason why well he's been suing him exactly uh and so you know he has you know we've seen this with the judiciary who've been cowed with the law firms we've seen it with with the media uh intelligence services civil service and state department everyone has kind of fallen into line because they're scared my whole thing is you know this is like one of those catch 22 problems i talked about it before but you would want the part of the reason people lost all trust in the mainstream media in america it was a litany of things but when trump came up it's like what i could never understand is there's already a lot of good material there if you want if you want to attack them if you're in the media and you want to find weaknesses and we can't say this on air because they read it as a racial slur but certain things in the armor if you will that said you know they would go far beyond that and they would make things up and they would make things up and they would make things up and they would make things up about him to the point that it actually developed a semblance of a lot of people feeling empathy for him going oh my god they'll just make up anything about this guy and his response now especially by his second term has been well i'm just going to sue all the press and i hear you it's not great to be lied about for sure and i think like sometimes there should be consequences of course if even people in the press lie about you but the optics and the symbolism of the sitting president of the united states and the president of the united states who's you know at least supposed to be the highest man in power suing the fourth estate really bad look i've said this before i don't i don't care how people take that it's a really bad look you have to fight it out out verbally publicly and you know in that case he's won those things or just be above it and i mean the royal family don't tend i mean they do sometimes you know they have ndas with staff and they do issue issue writs against them uh and if they prevent publication of books and they prevented people sending stories to the papers um but generally speaking they kind of ignore the press and neither confirm nor deny and and but they then work quietly behind the scenes to kind of undermine the credibility of those people but i mean of course you know trump is teflon and people don't seem to care about things i mean people of course tried you know to brought up cases katie johnson all these things i mean and and and his supporters don't seem to care about it but you're absolutely right he should be set an example yeah uh and uh but you know attack has always been his form of defense but you're absolutely right you've got to be careful that people you know he presents himself as a victim and you've got to be careful that you know everybody's got to be careful that you know everybody's got to be careful that you know everyone comes after him um and we've seen it and i'm always careful about it that people feed you false information in order to undermine your argument saying can we believe this because actually this has been proved not to be true that's right um or this guy has an agenda um but it doesn't mean that you know this is the role of the press it's the role of writers you know to hold people in power to account and to tell the truth i mean i'm a historian our job is to tell the truth about the past uh and we shouldn't be cowed by by bullies um whatever happens and i think the more people who do it and there'll be no the power of social media the power now of substack and podcasts it's very difficult now for them to take to take action i mean this is something the royal family have had to respond to i mean they they control the mainstream media through what we call the royal rotor so you were kind of you were in the tent they gave you access they get they gave you briefings but now there's so many people commentating outside that it's much more difficult for them to control and so what they're trying to do is to use the internet and and and um to just have their own channels to present stuff and that's clearly what trump does i mean with with you know with with twitter i mean he puts out his own version of events but we are in this extraordinary position where you know if you talk about fake news enough people think every all news is fake don't know who to trust i mean even the responsible media i think it's i think it's a boy who cried wolf scenario unfortunately for if the media reports things now that that could be true because they lost the trust in the 2010s i'd say more than anything and then you kind of saw it culminate with covid to where people are like they don't want to hear it now and i understand that but i try to i i do my best to look at things on a case-by-case basis and look at what the evidence is that's why your podcast is so important i think it's why so so popular too i hope so i mean people want that you know want to hear the truth and they want to hear people kind of being biased and i think it's also a matter of like you gotta always remind yourself and also remind everyone out there listening that like i'm in i'm sitting in this chair just like anyone else would be and i'm just doing my best with the information i have and that doesn't mean you're always going to get it right and when you get it wrong like at least in my experience like i try to be very honest about that with people and be like you know i used to think this this was the pieces of evidence why here's why i think that's not the case anymore and then people will do with that what i think is important to me is like i don't think anyone i think it's human nature people don't want to be told what to think i want to decide for themselves and i really that's what i value don't listen to me don't listen to people i talk to listen to what we say and then make your own call based on what people say well it's certainly what i try and do in the books i mean i try and present the evidence and clearly you you you collect the evidence to present your case but i always try and be as balanced as i can to put another point of view and i leave the the reader to draw conclusions thank you guys for checking out this clip if you haven't already subscribed please subscribe and hit the like button on this video it is a huge huge help and if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode that link is in the description below or right here and finally you can follow me on instagram and x by using the links in my description below this holiday all plans even unlimited are just fifteen dollars a month a holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song like all i want right okay we can't afford that you don't forget the music budget we're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain give it a try at mintmobile.com switch upfront payment of 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