New York:
Prince Andrew’s lawyers will use a court hearing on Tuesday to urge a New York judge to drop a lawsuit against the British royal family in the United States.
His lawyers are expected to argue that a once confidential settlement between prosecutor Virginia Giuffre and the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, revealed Monday, protects Andrew from lawsuits.
The hearing, which will take place between the representatives of the parties via videoconference, with press and public listening in by telephone, will start at 10:00 AM (1500 GMT).
Giuffre alleges that Epstein loaned her for sex with his wealthy and powerful associates, including Andrew, a claim the prince has repeatedly and strenuously denied.
A deal first made public on Monday by a New York court shows that Giuffre agreed to drop a 2009 civil suit against Epstein for $500,000 in Florida.
The settlement included a provision that claims to protect “other potential defendants” from prosecution in connection with alleged sexual abuse committed by Epstein, who committed suicide in prison two and a half years ago.
Lawyers for Queen Elizabeth II’s second son will be citing the agreement during Tuesday’s pleadings, when they will urge Judge Lewis Kaplan to drop Giuffre’s lawsuit against the prince.
Her lawyers have said they will argue that the settlement is “irrelevant” to her civil suit against Andrew and that the case should continue.
Giuffre sued the prince last year for unspecified damages, alleging he sexually assaulted her in 2001 when she was 17 and a minor under US law.
Andrew, 61, has not been charged with criminal charges.
Giuffre says Andrew attacked her at Epstein’s New York home and on his private island in the US Virgin Islands.
She alleges he also sexually assaulted her at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home, who was found guilty last week of trafficking minors for Epstein.
Maxwell convicted
Maxwell, who introduced Andrew to Epstein in the early 1990s, faces life behind bars after being convicted by New York jurors on five of the six charges she faced after a high-profile month-long trial.
Epstein died in 2019 at the age of 66 in a Manhattan prison, in what the New York coroner ruled a suicide, after being charged with child trafficking charges.
He was convicted in 2008 of paying young girls for sexual massages at his Florida mansion, but was jailed for just 13 months after signing a deal with the prosecutor at the time.
Andrew has rarely been seen in public since he was forced to leave the royal frontline in 2019 for failing to distance himself from Epstein.
In a disastrous BBC interview that year, Andrew denied Giuffre’s claim that they had shared a sweaty dance in a London nightclub, saying he was unable to sweat at the time due to a condition linked to fighting in the 1982 Falklands War.
Last week, Giuffre’s lawyers demanded that Andrew hand over medical records showing he can’t sweat.
Andrew’s legal team has accused Giuffre of seeking to profit from a “baseless lawsuit.”
On Friday, Kaplan rejected their attempts to stop the lawsuit from progressing because Giuffre now lives in Australia.
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