Prince Andrew sought to meet Jeffrey Epstein after his prison release, newly revealed emails show

2010 correspondence surfaces days after Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was stripped of his titles

Newly released emails reveal that former Duke of York Andrew Mountbatten Windsor expressed a desire to meet Jeffrey Epstein “to catch up in person” months after the convicted sex offender was released from prison.

The correspondence, published on Friday, comes just two days after Buckingham Palace stripped Andrew of all his titles and removed him from the official roll of the peerage in an effort to contain the damage caused by his escalating scandals.

Epstein was jailed in July 2009 for soliciting prostitution from a minor. In the 2010 email exchanges, Epstein suggested on 15 April that Andrew meet former JP Morgan executive Jes Staley, who was banned for life from the UK banking sector in June 2025 for misleading regulators about his relationship with Epstein.

Andrew replied that he would not be in the UK at that time but would “make sure I meet [Staley] soon on another trip.”

He added: “Also, I have no immediate plans to drop by New York but I think I should at some stage soon. I’ll look and see if I can make a couple of days before the summer. It would be good to catch up in person.”

Later that year, in December, the pair were photographed together in New York’s Central Park — a meeting Andrew would eventually describe as a “wrong decision.”

During his widely criticised 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, Andrew claimed the “sole purpose” of his New York visit was to end his contact with Epstein. He said he felt it was cowardly to break the news “over the telephone,” but nonetheless stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion for several days.

“I wanted to make sure that if I was going to go and see him, I had to make sure there was enough time between his release … I had to go and see him. I had to talk,” he said.

Andrew insisted the conversation concluded with a mutual agreement to cut all ties — a commitment he claimed to have honoured. However, a separate set of court documents released in January suggested otherwise. In one email, a “member of the British royal family,” believed to be Andrew, wrote to Epstein: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”

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