Gross New Andrew and Ghislaine Image is the Palace’s Epstein Xmas Nightmare
Sprawled, grinning, across the laps of obliging women and flanked by Ghislaine Maxwell, this new party snapshot defines the moral vacancy at the heart of Andrew’s horrific abuse of power.
Buckingham Palace was plunged into a pre-Christmas nightmare on Friday night after newly released Epstein files dumped a set of photographs that are deeply damaging to former Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.
One image in particular looks destined to become part of the enduring visual record of Andrew’s disgrace. It shows him in black tie, sprawled across the laps of five people—apparently women—whose faces have been blacked out, while another woman leans over them. The only face other than Andrew’s left unobscured is that of Ghislaine Maxwell, later convicted for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
The composition neatly encapsulates the sense of entitlement, impunity, and moral vacancy that has come to define Andrew’s public legacy.
A second photograph released on Friday is scarcely less troubling. It appears to show Sarah Ferguson in New York City, first posing with a suited man who looks like a driver, and then with a young woman holding a designer handbag whose identity has been obscured.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said it is censoring images and documents to protect victims among other reasons. The fact that faces are deliberately blacked out in these photographs therefore raises the deeply uncomfortable possibility that Andrew and Ferguson were being photographed alongside possible victims of Epstein’s trafficking network—a network in which Andrew has long been alleged to have participated.
