UK police chiefs say they are in touch with international law enforcement about the Epstein files
Thames Valley Police said this month they were looking into a claim that the former prince, while working as a UK trade ambassador in 2010, had shared sensitive documents with Epstein.
An email in the latest US release appears to show Mountbatten-Windsor forwarding Epstein a report from his special adviser on the then-king’s visit to Southeast Asia.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who would have turned 66 on Thursday, has always denied any wrongdoing with Epstein. The king expressed his “great concern” at the news on Thursday and stressed that “the law must take its place.”
The release of the Epstein files under a federal law signed by President Donald Trump was a significant departure from normal Justice Department policies. The Department of Justice does not routinely release investigative raw material in bulk, and the handling of sensitive material produced during trial is often governed by court-imposed protective orders.
It would not be common practice for the US to share raw investigative files with a foreign business without a formal request, just as it would not be the practice of the Justice Department to release derogatory information about someone who has not been charged with a crime.
Before the documents were made public, the Justice Department and the FBI said investigators “found no evidence that would predispose the investigation to uncharged third parties.”
“We found no basis to reconsider the disclosure of those documents,” according to a joint statement explaining their review of the documents.
But the release of millions of documents related to Epstein has had a worldwide impact. In Norway, the economic crimes unit has opened a corruption investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland regarding his relationship with Epstein. His attorney said Jagland would cooperate with the investigation, according to the Associated Press.
And Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau this week opened new lines of inquiry, one into alleged human trafficking and a case of possible financial impropriety linked to Epstein.
The Department of Justice has similar agreements with Norway and France, as well as many other countries. The Department of Justice has not commented on whether those countries have reached out.
In 2020, New York prosecutors formally asked the British government to speak to Mountbatten-Windsor as part of a criminal investigation into Epstein’s history of abuse, NBC News reported at the time. He repeatedly refused to testify, according to the US attorney’s office.
U.S. Attorney at the time Geoffrey Berman called Mountbatten-Windsor to a press conference, saying that “she publicly offered, in fact in a press release, she promised to cooperate with law enforcement investigating crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates,” but, Berman added later, “just cooperated.”
According to emails in the Epstein files, the London Metropolitan Police asked for help from an FBI agent in November who was based out of London and who had done work related to Epstein in 2021. Another agent took the job and said they would be happy to chat, according to the emails. It is not clear if there was any discussion.
Mountbatten-Windsor stepped down as royal in 2019, and in 2022 reached a legal settlement with Virginia Roberts Giuffre for an undisclosed amount after she filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging that she was trafficked by Epstein and that the former prince sexually assaulted her when she was 17.
