The latest batch of Epstein files released Tuesday sheds new light on the Justice Department\u2019s evidence involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, including that prosecutors believed the British royal \u201cengaged in sexual conduct\u201d with one of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n
The files also disclosed a grab bag of information drawn from prosecutors\u2019 long-running probe of the now-deceased financier, including an apparent letter from Epstein to another sex offender, Larry Nassar; a dustup over a subpoena to Amazon; and the existence of a photograph of Donald Trump and Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell obtained from the phone of the president\u2019s ally Steve Bannon.<\/p>\n
Though the release of the Epstein files remains incomplete, the latest tranche contains thousands of previously undisclosed documents and emails related to the Justice Department\u2019s investigation, including internal emails from the prosecutors working on the case. A new batch of materials corresponding to the latest published sequence of documents\u00a0first briefly appeared on the DOJ\u2019s site Monday.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s POLITICO\u2019s look at some of the revelations in the latest release.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors, armed with evidence that Mountbatten-Windsor had \u201cengaged in sexual conduct\u201d with one of Epstein\u2019s victims, threatened to force the British royal to speak with investigators under oath,\u00a0according to a document in the latest batch of Epstein files.<\/p>\n
Justice Department officials asked U.K. authorities to \u201cconduct a compelled interview\u201d with Mountbatten-Windsor in spring 2020 if he refused to voluntarily answer questions as part of DOJ\u2019s probe.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also disclosed the existence of evidence that Mountbatten-Windsor \u201cwas present\u201d for \u201ccertain\u201d interactions between a victim, Epstein and Maxwell, and of \u201cdocumentary\u201d evidence that Andrew \u201chad knowledge\u201d that Maxwell \u201crecruited females to engage in sex acts with Epstein and other men.\u201d Prosecutors also wrote that they had \u201cevidence that Prince Andrew engaged in sexual conduct involving one of Epstein’s victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, prosecutors wrote that Andrew \u201cis not presently a target of the investigation, and U.S. authorities have not, to date, gathered evidence that he has committed any crime under U.S. law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The document, known as a mutual legal assistance treaty request, or MLAT, also revealed that prosecutors sought to question Mountbatten-Windsor about two sex-trafficking investigations: that of Epstein, and a separate probe of Peter Nygard, a fashion executive who was under investigation at the time for a sex-trafficking ring targeting women and girls.<\/p>\n
Though federal prosecutors\u2019 interest in interviewing the former prince and their\u00a0MLAT request were previously known, the document itself is public for the first time. It provides the first confirmation that prosecutors had collected evidence of Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s sexual involvement with an Epstein victim.<\/p>\n
A request for comment sent to Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s office wasn\u2019t immediately answered. He has previously denied\u00a0sexual assault allegations\u00a0related to Epstein and Maxwell.<\/p>\n
The document, dated April 3, 2020, came after a series of lengthy and testy exchanges in January of that year between a federal prosecutor and an attorney for Mountbatten-Windsor in which the attorney repeatedly rebuffed or ignored requests for an interview.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors appear to have gathered less evidence regarding Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s possible involvement with Nygard, whom they eventually charged later that year with sex trafficking and racketeering. They wrote that Andrew had traveled at least once to Nygard Cay in the Bahamas, where Nygard allegedly conducted his sex-trafficking operation, and sought to question Mountbatten-Windsor about that visit or others.<\/p>\n
Nygard is serving an 11-year prison sentence in Canada for sexual assault and the U.S. sex-trafficking case against him remains pending. Nygard\u2019s lawyer has previously said his client would ultimately\u00a0be vindicated. His lawyer didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The files also hinted at possible fresh legal trouble for the British royal. In\u00a0an email dated Nov. 10, 2025, a detective chief inspector from the Metropolitan Police in London reached out to the FBI to say the police are reviewing allegations concerning Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s \u201cactivities\u201d with a person, the name of whom is redacted, and \u201cefforts he has allegedly made to get information about her through his protection officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Just days before Epstein\u2019s suicide in jail in 2019, the Justice Department threatened to ask a judge to hold Amazon in contempt after the company failed to produce documents related to the probe into the disgraced financier.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazon’s response to the attached grand jury subpoena is overdue by\u00a0several weeks,<\/ins><\/strong>\u201d an investigator, whose identity is redacted, wrote in\u00a0an Aug. 1 email\u00a0to the company. \u201cThe FBI has emailed and left messages with your legal department several times over the past weeks without a response. Please respond promptly to resolve Amazon’s non-compliance. Otherwise we will initiate contempt proceedings regarding your failure to comply with valid legal process.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear precisely what records the Justice Department was seeking from Amazon \u2014 the subpoena itself was not immediately accessible in the latest tranche of documents \u2014 but it appeared to relate to email communications from figures connected to the Epstein investigation.<\/p>\n The email suggests the subpoena for records was initially issued on June 24, 2019. In an Aug. 5, 2019, exchange, FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors\u00a0lamented the difficulty of getting a response\u00a0from the company.<\/p>\n A day later, it appeared that Amazon\u00a0cobbled together a response\u00a0to the subpoena, which the Justice Department described as woefully inadequate.<\/p>\n \u201cWe note with concern that the Subpoena responses list more than 300 descriptions of responsive materials as \u2018REDACTED,\u2019\u201d one of the unidentified investigators wrote on Aug. 6, 2019. \u201cPlease immediately produce either a complete response to the Subpoena without the redaction of nonprivileged responsive materials, or provide a legal basis for your refusal to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n The investigators also said Amazon appeared to only produce records related to two email addresses out of the nine identified in the subpoena.<\/p>\n Spokespeople for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n After Epstein\u2019s death in 2019, the Justice Department\u2019s pursuit of Maxwell intersected with another high-profile criminal probe: the investigation into Bannon and his associates for alleged misuse of donations to a charity supporting construction of Trump\u2019s border wall.<\/p>\n Trump pardoned Bannon for the alleged offenses on the final day of his first term. But prosecutors continued to pursue the case against his associates \u2014 and in June 2021, one of them noticed\u00a0something in the data\u00a0obtained from Bannon\u2019s phone that seemed relevant to the Epstein-related probe.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon’s phone,\u201d an investigator, whose identity is redacted, wrote. \u201cPlease let me know if you’d like anything further done with this.\u201d The image itself is not visible in the exchange.<\/p>\n A few days later, a response from another unidentified investigator came back: \u201cThanks very much for flagging \u2014 no need to do anything with this one, but thanks for letting me know, and do let me know if anything else pops up.\u201d<\/p>\n Bannon, who maintained an association with Epstein and once interviewed him,\u00a0had already come up\u00a0in Justice Department emails prior to the discovery of the Trump photo. In April 2021, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan flagged \u201ca number of text messages between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein on Bannon’s iPhone 7.\u201d<\/p>\n Bannon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He had previously not responded to POLITICO\u2019s requests for comments about Epstein but in July said\u00a0at a Turning Point USA summit\u00a0that \u201cEpstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things, not just individuals but also institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n The documents released Tuesday also included what appeared to be a suicide note from Epstein to another high-profile sex offender, Larry Nassar.<\/p>\n Soon after the document release, the Justice Department\u00a0cast doubt on the authenticity\u00a0of the six-year-old letter, saying officials are \u201ccurrently looking into the validity of this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar and we will follow up as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Less than two hours later, DOJ officials\u00a0said in a statement\u00a0\u201cthe FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n The two-page note is\u00a0postmarked from Northern Virginia shortly after Epstein\u2019s death\u00a0in August 2019 and was returned by the Postal Service to the mailroom of the Manhattan detention center where Epstein died.<\/p>\n \u201cAs you know by now, I have taken the \u2018short route\u2019 home,\u201d the letter says. It also appears to reference Trump\u2019s lewd comments about women in an Access Hollywood interview that were\u00a0unearthed during the 2016 campaign cycle.<\/p>\n Nassar, a former doctor for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team, was convicted in 2017 and 2018 of a series of sexual assaults on young athletes. He was once housed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Tucson, where the letter is addressed, but was transferred to another prison before the letter\u2019s postmark date.<\/p>\n Investigators\u00a0asked for a handwriting analysis of the letter\u00a0in 2020, released documents show, but DOJ said Tuesday the writing \u201cdoes not appear to match\u201d Epstein\u2019s. In 2023,\u00a0the Associated Press obtained documents\u00a0under the Freedom of Information Act that referenced the letter but did not include its text.<\/p>\n Trump has denied any involvement in Epstein\u2019s crimes and has not been accused of wrongdoing linked to the convicted sex offender. The two men were friendly and socialized together in the 1990s and early 2000s, with Trump repeatedly flying on Epstein\u2019s jet. However, Trump has said their relationship broke down decades ago over Epstein\u2019s attempt to hire employees from Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n The newly released documents also include records showing that prosecutors preparing for the sex-trafficking trial of Maxwell in 2021\u00a0served a subpoena for employment records from Mar-a-Lago. The focus of the subpoena is redacted from the records the Justice Department posted.<\/p>\n Asked about the newly released records, a White House spokesperson pointed to\u00a0a Justice Department statement\u00a0Tuesday that said some of the Epstein materials contain false claims about Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n Aaron Pellish and Adam Wren contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The latest batch of Epstein files released Tuesday sheds new light on the Justice Department\u2019s evidence involving Andrew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2493,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions\/2493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Investigators discuss apparent photo of Trump and Maxwell on Bannon\u2019s phone<\/h5>\n
DOJ dismisses as \u2018fake\u2019 a purported Epstein note to Larry Nassar referencing Trump<\/h5>\n