Taxpayer funded Metropolitan Police bodyguards for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor were instructed to provide door security for a lavish celebrity dinner party at Jeffrey Epstein’s New York home, emails suggest.
Two royal protection officers appear to have been told to act as doormen at the paedophile financier’s seven-floor Manhattan mansion in 2010, after he had been convicted of a child sex offence.
The officers, charged with protecting the prince, were staying at the multimillion-pound townhouse on 71st street during the royal’s trip to visit his friend, according to emails unearthed in the latest tranche of the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice.
The emails, first reported in The Sunday Times, suggest those officers were also asked to provide security for a dinner party attended by the royal on 2 December. Celebrities named on the guestlist in the emails include Hollywood director Woody Allen, his wife Soon-Yi Previn, as well as two US news anchors, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, the comedian Chelsea Handler, and Charlie Rose, a talk show host. It is unclear whether they attended.
In an email sent the night before the party, a member of staff wrote to Epstein: “The Duke’s 2 protection officers along with state security will all be here for tomorrow’s dinner party [sic]… Rich has given them instructions on the door.”
The reference to “state security” suggests that US diplomatic protection officers also attended. “Rich” is understood to be member of Epstein’s team.
Mr Mountbatten-Windsor told BBC Newsnight in 2019 that he had travelled to New York in 2010 solely to “cut ties” with Epstein. He was photographed with the financier in Central Park during the visit.
The findings come after the Met police urged the prince’s former close protection officers to “consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard” is relevant to their investigation into Epstein and his associates.
The force said it is contacting former and serving close protection officers who worked closely with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor amid growing questions over what they witnessed.
Dai Davies, the former head of the Royal Protection Command from 1994 to 1998, said on Friday it “beggars belief” that police and other officials working closely the royal never saw any “untoward” behaviour. He raised questions over a “culture of silence” around the former Duke of York’s conduct.
“Don’t forget, this is going back many years now, 20 years plus, in some instances, so many of them will have retired,” he told Channel 4.
“So, clearly they will have to decide with their conscience and their moral compass, what they did or didn’t see.”
Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was last week arrested and released under investigation by a different police force on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The royal has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Thames Valley Police confirmed the arrest on Thursday, the royal’s 66th birthday, following allegations uncovered in the Epstein files, that the former prince had shared sensitive information with Epstein while serving as the UK’s trade envoy.
He was detained for 11 hours for police questioning, before he was pictured cowering in the back of a Range Rover as he was driven away from a police station in Aylesham, Norfolk.
Police also raided two addresses, with unmarked police cars and plain-clothed police officers seen outside Wood Farm, where Mr Mountbatten-Windsor now lives on the King’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, on the morning of his arrest.
Searches are also entering their fourth day at his former home, the sprawling 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, Berkshire, that he shared with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson until recently.
The government is understood to be considering bringing in a law to remove the disgraced royal, currently eighth in line to the throne, from the line of succession after police investigation concludes.
A group of MPs are also considering launching a parliamentary probe into the role of UK trade envoys following the allegations.
Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles amid the ongoing scandal into friendship with Epstein.
In 2022, he paid a reported £12 million to settle a civil sexual assault lawsuit brought by Virgina Giuffre, who said she was trafficked by Epstein and made to sleep with the royal on three occasions. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
