Royal flush: will Britain hand Prince Andrew over to the feds?

Roll out the red carpet: the Department of Justice is demanding a royal visit.

The US has hosted Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle since their very public exit from the British royal family. But it’s Harry’s uncle Andrew who is in real demand: the Duke of York is wanted for questioning over his connections to dead billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The DoJ has submitted a mutual legal assistance request to the UK Home Office, according to the Sun. A source tells the British tabloid, ‘It’s a huge statement of intent from the US and it moves Andrew into the realms of a criminal investigation. It’s also frankly a diplomatic nightmare.’

Prince Andrew was a long-standing friend and associate of Epstein. He had stayed at the billionaire financier’s properties in New York, Palm Beach and the US Virgin Islands: even after Epstein was jailed for procuring an underage girl for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre alleges she had sex with the Prince on three occasions while underage.

The Prince gave a disastrous interview to Emily Maitlis of the BBC last year in an attempt to defend himself from Roberts Giuffre’s claims: he said he was at a fast-casual pizza restaurant in Surrey on one of the dates Roberts Giuffre alleges they slept together. In response to Roberts Giuffre’s description of the Prince sweating on top of her, Andrew said he had acquired a medical condition in the Falklands war that rendered him incapable of sweating: a condition from which he has supposedly since recovered.

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Interest in the Epstein story has risen further in the past few weeks. First came the revelation that Bill Clinton was having an affair with Epstein acolyte Ghislaine Maxwell, according to an investigative book by Alana Goldman and Daniel Halper that was published last month. Then came the release of a multi-part Netflix documentary, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich. The series is largely based on a 2016 book of the same title, penned by James Patterson. In the years since, Patterson has authored a number of other titles, including The President is Missing, which he co-wrote with…Epstein associate Bill Clinton.

So will the Brits turn over the grand old Duke of York to the feds? The UK government is currently in the midst of tense Brexit negotiations with the EU, and is desperate to bolster the ‘Special Relationship’ after falling out with Trump over their proposed 5G deal with Huawei. Cockburn thinks swapping Andrew for Anne Sacoolas, the US spy who killed a British boy in a hit-and-run, could help restore the US-UK harmony…