More than four years after Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail cell, and nearly two years after Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced for sex-trafficking, the web of allegations, documents and unanswered questions around their relationship with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — formerly Prince Andrew — continues to expand rather than recede. The latest tranche of U.S. Department of Justice files, including an email apparently asking Maxwell for “new inappropriate friends,” has once again thrust the king’s younger brother into the center of a scandal that refuses to fade.

Image Illustration. Photo by Stefan C. Asafti on Unsplash

The ‘Invisible Man’ and the Balmoral Email

At the heart of the latest controversy is an email dated 16 August 2001, released as part of the Justice Department’s third batch of Epstein-related documents. The message, sent from an account styled “The Invisible Man” and signed off as “A,” describes the writer being at “Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family” and asks Maxwell: “Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?” The address and contextual details — including references to leaving the Royal Navy and the death of a long‑serving valet — have led multiple outlets, including Sky News and The Washington Post, to conclude that the likely author is Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor.

Maxwell’s reply, according to documents summarized by outlets such as Newsweek, apologizes that she has managed to find only “appropriate friends,” prompting the sender to respond “Distraught!” and to explain that his life is in “turmoil” after leaving the “RN” — a detail that aligns with Andrew’s departure from the Royal Navy in 2001.

Peru, ‘Two‑Legged Sightseeing’ and a Pattern of Social Arrangements

The Balmoral email is not an isolated fragment. Additional 2002 correspondence in the same cache shows Maxwell and “A” discussing a forthcoming trip to Peru. In one forwarded message, Maxwell tells a contact she has “just given Andrew your telephone no.” and asks for help arranging sightseeing, including “two‑legged sight seeing (read intelligent pretty fun and from good families)” to ensure Andrew “will be very happy,” according to reporting by The Guardian. Photographs from March 2002 show Andrew in Lima on an official visit, reinforcing the link between the email trail and real‑world travel.

A Long History of Questions — and Denials

Andrew’s connection to Epstein is not new. The friendship first drew serious public scrutiny in 2011, when a photograph emerged of the then‑prince with his arm around Virginia Giuffre’s waist, with Maxwell smiling in the background — an image now widely reproduced and cited in civil litigation. Andrew has consistently and emphatically denied Giuffre’s claim that he sexually abused her when she was 17, a denial he repeated in a now‑infamous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview that was widely seen as disastrous for his reputation.

In 2022, Andrew reached an undisclosed financial settlement with Giuffre in a U.S. civil case, avoiding a trial in New York. Court filings indicated the agreement involved a substantial payment reportedly in the millions of dollars, though exact figures have never been officially confirmed. Outlets including the BBC and The New York Times reported that the settlement likely exceeded $10 million, citing legal experts and people familiar with the talks.

Law Enforcement Frustration and the U.S. Files

While Andrew has never been criminally charged, U.S. prosecutors have long signaled their frustration at what they say is his lack of cooperation. In January 2020 Geoffrey Berman, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, publicly stated that Andrew had provided “zero cooperation” to investigators probing Epstein’s wider network — a characterization his legal team disputed. Newly released internal emails, reported by The Washington Post, show U.S. attorneys discussing “various factual inaccuracies” in Andrew’s public account of his dealings with Epstein and debating how forcefully to respond.

The broader Epstein document release is itself contentious. Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Justice Department was required to release its files by December 2025. After missing a key deadline, officials disclosed that more than one million additional potentially relevant documents had been identified, pushing full compliance back by “a few more weeks” and fueling suspicions among some lawmakers that the government is still obscuring the scale of Epstein’s network.

Royal Consequences and Public Opinion

In Britain, the cumulative impact of these revelations has been devastating for Andrew’s public role. In early 2022, following intense pressure, Queen Elizabeth II stripped her son of his honorary military roles and the style “His Royal Highness” for official purposes. He later relinquished remaining patronages, and in 2024 and 2025 King Charles III moved to remove him from the Royal Lodge and formally distance the monarchy from his affairs, as reported by outlets such as The Guardian and The Washington Post.

Public opinion has mirrored that institutional retreat. A YouGov poll conducted in 2022, after the settlement with Giuffre, found that just 6% of Britons held a positive view of Andrew, while 83% expressed a negative one — making him by far the least popular senior royal measured that year. YouGov’s data showed his net favorability plunging below –80 points, a level from which he has yet to recover.

Epstein’s Network and the Scale of Abuse

The renewed focus on Andrew comes against a grim statistical backdrop. When federal prosecutors charged Epstein in 2019, they alleged that he had sexually abused dozens of underage girls at his homes in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005, some as young as 14. A 2020 Justice Department report into the earlier non‑prosecution agreement in Florida noted that more than 30 victims had been identified by the FBI during its original “Operation Leap Year” investigation. That figure is likely an undercount: civil litigation and compensation programs have since drawn claims from over 150 alleged victims, according to filings cited in federal court and summarized by major U.S. outlets.

Maxwell herself was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison on sex‑trafficking and related charges, after a jury found she had groomed and recruited girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004. Court documents and recent disclosures portray a sprawling social web that drew in business leaders, academics and politicians. New complaints released under the transparency law, highlighted by People magazine’s reporting on a 13‑year‑old alleged victim, underscore how early Epstein’s pattern of abuse is said to have begun.

Why the Story Will Not Go Away

For Andrew, the persistent drip of emails, photos and internal memos from U.S. files keeps reviving questions he has tried to consign to the past. Each new release does more than revisit old allegations: it adds texture, timelines and corroborating details to a narrative that stretches from royal estates in Scotland to official trade missions in South America and Manhattan townhouses visited by some of the world’s most powerful men.

For victims of Epstein and Maxwell, campaigners argue, the incremental transparency is long overdue. But for Buckingham Palace, it guarantees that the shadow of a convicted sex offender will hang over one member of the royal family for years to come. With U.S. officials still sifting more than a million additional documents, according to the Associated Press, the uncomfortable truth for Andrew and the institution he once represented is clear: the Epstein story, and his role in it, is unlikely to go away any time soon.