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ATTERSON

oligarchs, corrupt presidents of
Mu'ammar Gadhafi, among other
were explored in a Vanity Fair
TH ANDREW.
being loyal to his friends,” a “royal
ard Klein. “Take his feelings for
ince and you bring a woman into
reasons, she’s spit out, you might
er. The duke feels that she’s been
se relationship with the Duchess
re have been many problems over
ich stem from the duchess. Some
s is inconsistent with being mar-
uke. There’s no question but that
destructive element in the duke’s

manifested itself last December,
at his home in New York,” said a
n Palace. “Epstein was a friend of
f 20 years. It was the first time in
stein. He now recognizes that the
wise.”
oto of the two of them together,”
say.
t the prince’s dealings with Jeffrey

ein’s town house, the prince dished
nephew Prince William to Kate

; dinner companions were so inter-

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FILTHY RICH

ested in every detail,” a guest in attendance told a New York Post
gossip columnist. “What would Kate wear, what would the
Queen wear, would his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson be invited?”
Other guests in attendance that night included Chelsea Han-
dler, George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose, Katie Couric, and
Woody Allen.
At around the same time, Jeffrey Epstein told the New York
Post, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender.’ It’s the differ-
ence between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”

Was it so remarkable that Prince Andrew would have been seen
in Epstein’s company? Andrew’s philandering had been tabloid
fodder for years. Randy Andy, they called him in the UK. And in
the circles that Jeffrey Epstein moved in, philandering wasn’t
seen as a vice. Epstein came of age just as industrywide deregu-
lation took hold on Wall Street. Junk bonds were king. Call girls
were charging ten thousand dollars a night. And in the shadows,
you’d see things that would have made Caligula blush. Sights
that would make Nero himself reach for the nearest fire extin-
guisher. When the urge presented itself, the new super rich
didn’t have to swap wives.
They could simply swap harems.
By the same token, was it so very strange to think that a man
like the prince would have grown so detached from reality—
insofar as reality is even a word that applies to a prince? Was it
odd that he thought it was absolutely fine to be seen by photog-
raphers strolling through Central Park with a registered sex
offender—when at the time large swaths of the financial, bank-
ing, and trading industries were characterized by their very

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