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A bombshell email confirms that the infamous photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with his arm around his chief accuser was genuine, it emerged today.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had long disputed the authenticity of the image of him in intimate contact with Virginia Giuffre when she was just 17.
And his suggestion that the damning 2001 image may have been faked was central to the defence he tried to put over in his disastrous Newsnight interview.
But today an email came to light from disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in which she said she was ‘stating for the record as fact’ that not only had she introduced the former Prince to Giuffre but that the image was taken at her London home that same night.
Her admission, unearthed by the Daily Mail, will come as a major blow to Andrew, leaving his controversial Pizza Express ‘alibi’ in tatters.
It was made in a series of 2015 emails released in a tranche of more than three million Jeffrey Epstein-related documents by the US Department of Justice last week.
Drafting a statement intended to hit back at reports of mounting allegations in the press, disgraced socialite Maxwell had sent Epstein an email asking for his approval.
‘In 2001 I was in London when (redacted) met a number of friends of mine including Prince Andrew,’ she wrote.
‘A photograph was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family.
‘I never asked (redacted) to give him a massage,’ her draft statement added.
In the body of the email, she said: ‘I am stating for the record as fact’ before adding: ‘Prince Andrew came to my house to visit me – (redacted) was in the house and they did meet.’
However, she claimed she had ‘no knowledge’ of Ms Giuffre ‘having sexual activity’ with Andrew or any other ‘famous people’.
Epstein replied saying her statement left ‘too many unanswered questions’ adding: ‘Her and andrew?…whats the deal here? why is she there.’
Maxwell insisted that she need the statement ‘asap’ and that she was advised to say ‘I was not aware of massage w/andrew in my house’.
‘These thing they have to stay, along w/meeting virginia and rebutting those allegations. I needs it asap.’
In the email headed ‘first draft privledged joint defense agreement’, Maxwell claims she was compelled to speak out due to the ‘salacious claims’ against her.
She says: ‘The allegations made against me by (redacted) are lies. I have consistently stated that they are untrue and I have waited for an opportunity to prove this in a court of law.’
Seeking to discredit Giuffre, who took her own life aged 41 last year, Maxwell stated: ‘The salacious claims she makes are untrue and made purely for financial gain.’
‘The relentless media harassment to which I, Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew have been subjected to over the last week has become intolerable and breaches any justifiable sense of natural justice.’
She claims she plans to refer ‘both the harassment and the unfair and untrue allegations’ to the Press Complaints Commission immediately.
Maxwell, who was jailed for 20 years, for her role in luring underage girls for her former boyfriend Epstein, said she found the allegations against her ‘deeply hurtful’.
She concludes the statement saying: ‘Finally (redacted) claims she was a sex slave for the rich and famous, however the reality is that working as a waitress in a burger bar.’
The emails were written days after Ms Giuffre first launched her bombshell legal claim in the US in January 2015 accusing Maxwell of recruiting her as a ‘sex slave’.
Allegations that she was forced to have sex with the former prince were central to her case.
The correspondence directly contradicts repeated denials about the meeting in London ever taking place, with both Andrew and Maxwell trying to cast doubt over the image’s authenticity.
In Andrew’s disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview, he famously claimed he was not at Maxwell’s home but at a Pizza Express in Woking.
‘I was with the children, and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at, I suppose, sort of 4pm or 5pm in the afternoon,’ he said.
When asked why he would remember a meal at Pizza Express 18 years later, he said: ‘Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do, a very unusual thing for me to do…
‘I’ve only been to Woking a couple of times and I remember it weirdly distinctly,’ he claimed.
Andrew and his allies have long sought to cast doubt over the authenticity of the image, which shows him holding Ms Giuffre, then 17 and known as Virginia Roberts.
Despite claiming they never met, the former duke paid Ms Giuffre millions to settle a civil sexual assault claim in 2022.
Maxwell, too, dismissed the image as fake in an interview from prison, while those close to Andrew insisted his fingers were ‘chubbier’ and he was taller than depicted.
The convicted associate of paedophile Epstein also claimed in interviews with the US DoJ that she had no recollection of the pair meeting in her home.
The picture was unearthed by The Mail on Sunday as Ms Giuffre insisted, she slept with Andrew in London – a claim the disgraced ex-prince has vehemently denied.
Ms Giuffre said convicted paedophile Epstein took the photograph on a disposable camera before the group went to dinner and then Tramp nightclub.
She claimed was forced to have sex with Andrew that night at Maxwell’s house as well as at Epstein’s home in Manhattan and on his private Caribbean island of Little St James.
The latest revelations will heap fresh humiliation on Andrew’s embarrassing ties to Epstein – links that have already seen him stripped of his titles.
In addition, he and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, have been forced out of the Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate, where they have lived for more than two decades.
