New Documents Show Officials Feared Andrew Would Sue if Government Helped FBI in Epstein Probe
The Andrew drama heats up again as emails reveal UK government fears he’d sue if they helped the FBI bring him in over Epstein.
Fresh details from the new batch of 'Epstein Files' suggest things were already tense behind the scenes when it came to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Officials at the UK Home Office were reportedly worried he could drag the government to the High Court if they helped the FBI get him to testify. Basically, cooperating with US authorities might have sparked a full-blown legal clash right at home.
And this is not coming out of nowhere. During the Epstein investigation back in 2020, the former Prince repeatedly turned down requests from the FBI for a voluntary interview. Instead, his legal team said he would only provide a written statement. That refusal eventually pushed the US Department of Justice to escalate things, submitting a formal request, known as a mutual legal assistance order, to the UK Home Office in an attempt to compel Mountbatten-Windsor to speak. But in the end, it went nowhere.
The UK publication, The Sun, uncovered damning emails that give a clearer picture of why things never moved forward. Civil servants in Whitehall were reportedly concerned that Blackfords, the law firm representing the disgraced Prince, would immediately push back if the UK stepped in to help the FBI.
According to one email, officials believed that the moment the Home Office approved the request and passed it to the police, Blackfords would launch a judicial review. The email said, “In that action, they believe Blackfords will claim that the Home Office failed to follow its internal guidelines on reserving MLA assistance to those instances in which voluntary cooperation is not possible.” Which basically means that the government had not followed its own rules. This kind of international legal help should only be used when voluntary cooperation is not an option.
Since Mountbatten-Windsor’s team had already offered to cooperate in a limited way (through written statements), the expectation was that his lawyers would claim the UK acted too soon. In that scenario, they would likely ask the court to cancel the approval and push the matter back to US authorities to handle it directly with their legal team instead. The former US attorney, Geoffrey Berman, who led the New York investigation into Epstein, has since suggested British authorities may have shielded the ex-Prince. “We got absolutely nowhere. Were they protecting him? I presume someone was,” Berman wrote in his book.
The situation for Mountbatten-Windsor just went downhill after his connection with the convicted pedophile resurfaced. It left King Charles III no other option but to strip him of his royal titles in October 2025. He was also evicted from the Royal Lodge along with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. Things further escalated when he was arrested on his 66th birthday due to suspicions of public office misconduct. He has now permanently settled on Marsh Farms of the King’s Sandringham Estate.
