Prince Andrew stayed in touch with late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein for months after he claimed in a 2019 train wreck television interview that he had flown to Manhattan to end their friendship, federal court documents suggest.
Haunted by his connections to the disgraced financier, Prince Andrew tried to clear his name, telling BBC's Emily Maitlis that he met with Epstein one last time in New York, in December 2010, to officially cut ties.
He claimed that photos of the pair walking through Central Park were taken at the very moment he was terminating their friendship.
After a four-day stay at Epstein's Upper East Side townhouse, the Duke of York told Maitlis that he never saw or spoke to Epstein again.
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"And to this day I never had any contact with him," Prince Andrew insisted.
However, emails recently disclosed in a 22-page document that is part of a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Virgin Islands against JPMorgan challenge that assertion.
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"Andrew asked for your London schedule," Epstein allegedly wrote then-JP Morgan executive Jes Staley Feb. 28, 2011.
In the BBC interview, Prince Andrew, now 63, also claimed that he stopped communicating with Epstein after his arrest in 2006 for the sexual assault of a minor.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 and served 13 months in jail. He was released in July 2009 followed by one year of house arrest.
"I ceased contact with him after I was aware that he was under investigation and that was later in 2006, and I wasn't in touch with him again until 2010," Prince Andrew said, referring to the New York trip.
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"So no contact?" asked Maitlis.
"No contact," he replied. "2010 was it. That was it."
Prince Andrew, however, appears to have regularly communicated with Epstein and even dined with him when he was on house arrest.
"Andrew just sat next to me at dinner. We will try to connect this week," Epstein wrote Staley in an email.
Between June 2009 and February 2011, Epstein repeatedly acted as the go-between for Prince Andrew and JPMorgan employees, according to federal court filings.
Epstein, who was found hanged in 2019 in a jail cell while awaiting trial on a sex trafficking charge, allegedly told the Duke of York that Staley would be in London in April 2010, and the two should meet.
In another communication from September 2010, Epstein wrote Staley, "About to connect with Andrew."
The BBC interview came about after Virginia Giuffre alleged in a lawsuit that Epstein forced her to have sex with the royal against her will.
READ THE INTERNAL JPMORGAN MEMO DETAILING JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND PRINCE ANDREW'S COMMUNICATIONS
King Charles III's younger brother denied the allegations but later settled with Giuffre for an undisclosed sum.
The interview was so disastrous it led to his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, relieving him of his royal duties.
Representatives for Prince Andrew did not immediately return requests for comment.
The damning communications were compiled in an internal JPMorgan document and turned over to the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of discovery in its $190 million lawsuit against the bank.
The Caribbean government has accused JPMorgan of facilitating and concealing Epstein's sex-trafficking scheme, which the bank has denied.
Lawyers for JPMorgan did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
