Prince Andrew seeks to have ‘baseless’ lawsuit by Epstein accuser dropped

Prince Andrew is seeking to have a judge drop a lawsuit filed against him by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York when she was under 18 years old.

“Virginia Giuffre may well be a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and nothing can excuse, nor fully capture, the abhorrence and gravity of Epstein’s monstrous behavior against Giuffre, if so,” according to court documents filed by Andrew’s lawyers on Friday. 

“However, and without diminishing the harm suffered as a results of Epstein’s alleged misconduct, Prince Andrew never sexually abused or assaulted Giuffre. He unequivocally denies Giuffre’s false allegations against him,” they continue. 

In the court documents, Andrew’s lawyers alleged that Giuffre started a “baseless lawsuit” against him “to achieve another payday at his expense and at the expense of those closest to him.”

The lawyers also claim that because a settlement against Epstein had been reached in 2009, “Epstein’s former attorney, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew are axiomatically among the releasees in that 2009 settlement agreement.”

“Prince Andrew’s attempt now to use the 2009 release as a get out of jail free card shows how desperate he is to dodge and duck the facts of what he did,” a lawyer for Giuffre, David Boies, said in a statement. 

Boies claimed that the release was “irrelevant” and something “to which he is not a party” of. Giuffre’s lawyer claimed that Prince Andrew did not know about it until recently and that it “is just another in a series of attempts to avoid facing the merits of the serious charges against him.”

A lawsuit against Andrew was filed by Giuffre earlier this year in August in which she claimed that Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Epstein, had directed her to have sex with the Duke of York in the early 2000s.

Andrew previously denied those allegations. 

“It didn’t happen. I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever,” Andrew said during a BBC interview in 2019.

Updated 5:02 p.m.