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There are dumber ways to waste your multimillion dollar inheritance than attempting to blow up an ironclad legal settlement. But not a lot dumber.
And yet, Andrew Windsor, brother of King Charles, seems intent on doing just that. Last February, the 62-year-old monarch paid several million dollars to settle a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, a woman who was sexually trafficked by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre claimed that she had been trafficked to the then-prince as a minor, and even had a photograph of herself with him.
The prince denied the allegations in a series of embarrassing statements, including one in which he he claimed to have been unable to sweat at the time of the alleged assaults. He did not, however, make those statements to prosecutors in the Epstein case. Nor did he seem all that eager to make them under oath, settling with Giuffre once it became clear that he would have to participate in discovery.
But now, according to British tabloids The Sun and the Daily Mail, Windsor regrets that decision in light of a recent jailhouse video in which Epstein’s alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell said that she believed the photo was faked. He’s also encouraged by Giuffre’s recent retraction of a lawsuit against law professor Alan Dershowitz, whom she previously accused of sexually abusing her.
And so, flush with cash inherited from his late mother Queen Elizabeth, as well as the proceeds from the sale of a ski chalet in Switzerland, Prince Andrew may seek to have the settlement agreement overturned, in hopes of forcing Giuffre to apologize for sullying his royal name.
“Andrew felt as if he was in a pressure-cooker, as if he was given no option but to settle,” a source told the Daily Mail. “But he never wanted to settle and has always insisted he was innocent. He wants to see what legal routes might be available to him.”
Here on Planet Earth, or at least the parts of it liberated from his family’s yoke in 1776, it takes something in the neighborhood of fraud to overturn a signed settlement agreement, particularly when all parties are sophisticated litigants represented by effective counsel. “Never wanted to settle” and sincerely believes that he didn’t do it is probably not going to cut it. Ditto for “really wants to get out of the doghouse and start being a full time royal again, because that was super fun.”
But hope springs eternal! And so does Alan Dershowitz.
From The Daily Mail:
It is understood that Andrew is now receiving unofficial advice from Dershowitz, who has long argued that the Duke should have stood his ground, saying: ‘Andrew should have not settled. He should have fought for the truth like me.’
Perhaps someone will make the prince aware that the eminent professor has fallen under the sway of a demented pillow purveyor and is currently being sanctioned for having his name on an offensively defective lawsuit in Arizona. We only pray that the royal handlers break the news to him gently, as he’s apparently just getting over a weeping fit at being told he can’t wear his military uniform at his mother’s funeral.
The poor dear!
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
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