Prince Andrew’s attempt to overturn Virginia Giuffre’s sexual assault lawsuit against him has been rejected by a federal judge. Judge Lewis A Kaplan ruled on Saturday, January 1 that Prince Andrew’s lawyers must turn over documents on the schedule that has been set in Giuffre’s lawsuit regardless of his lawyer’s claims that the allegations against him are “baseless.” The written order came just days before the release of the details of the 2009 settlement between Giuffre and disgraced financier (and longtime friend of the prince’s) Jeffrey Epstein, according to Sky News.
- Prince Andrew has tried every trick in the book to avoid being held to account. In a televised UK interview last year, Prince Andrew claimed that he couldn’t have assaulted Giuffre because he’d never met her and besides, he doesn’t sweat (Giuffre had claimed he sweated heavily during the incident). Once the civil lawsuit was filed, Andrew first claimed that the settlement between Giuffre and Epstein meant he couldn’t be prosecuted. When that didn’t work, he said the age of consent is 17 and therefore Giuffre wasn’t a minor at the time of the alleged abuse. That wasn’t accepted either, so he then insisted that since Giuffre, a US citizen, is now living in Australia, that the case in the US should be dismissed.
- Giuffre’s attorneys called Prince Andrew out publicly for his desperate and feeble tactics. Lawyer Sigrid McCawley called Andrew’s attempts to have the lawsuit thrown out “just another in a series of tired attempts by Prince Andrew to duck and dodge the legal merits of the case Virginia Giuffre has brought against him. All parties in litigation are subject to discovery and Prince Andrew is no exception.”
- Virginia Giuffre’s former boyfriend has backed up her claims. Anthony Figueroa, 39, said that Roberts often came back from trips with Epstein depressed and anxious and that after her alleged encounter with Prince Andrew, she revealed that she “didn’t want to do it.” As he told the Mirror: “I didn’t see the photo of her with Andrew until after we split. It still p***** me off to think about it because from the times she got back from seeing him, things were different. That was what ended us. I’m not in contact with her, but I’m proud of what Virginia is doing. Andrew needs to be questioned by the authorities here. He should face up to it.”
- Prince Andrew’s legal team isn’t taking the case seriously. Judge Kaplan revealed that Prince Andrew’s attorneys not only have failed to raise a formal defense but they haven’t responded to the merits of the claim at all. The case is ongoing. Many are hopeful that Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction late last month will set a precedent that sees other abusers in Epstein’s circle held accountable for their heinous actions.
