Update: Disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein dies by suicide

One month before wealthy financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on new sex trafficking charges involving underage girls, two of his famous one-time friends — Donald Trump and Prince Andrew — appeared to have a friendly time together during the president’s official state visit to the U.K.

The Duke of York helped his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, play guide for Trump’s tour of Buckingham Palace’s collection of historic American artifacts. A smiling Andrew also escorted the president and first lady Melania Trump to Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

To royal observers, Andrew’s time with Trump at Westminster Abbey marks the most high-profile gig the duke has enjoyed in years.

But it’s curious that neither royal aides nor the White House thought about the potentially problematic nature of a Trump-Andrew photo-op. The two are among the most high-profile figures caught up in the Epstein scandal, which has intensified in recent months over different court battles, including the decision to unseal documents in a civil case that could prove damaging to Epstein and others involved in his alleged trafficking operation, the Miami Herald reported.

Epstein, 66, was arrested Saturday at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after arriving on a private plane from France, the New York Times, Miami Herald and other outlets reported. A federal indictment unsealed Monday alleges that Epstein sexually assaulted girls at his mansions in Manhattan and Florida — more than a decade after a widely criticized secret plea deal shielded him and his alleged co-conspirators from similar charges in Florida, reports said.

Epstein originally was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls he coerced into engaging in sex acts at his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion and in other locations from 2001 to 2005, the Miami Herald reported. But the deal essentially shut down an FBI probe into identifying more victims and into whether other powerful people took part in his sex crimes or turned a blind eye, the Miami Herald and other outlets said.

The deal was overseen by former Miami U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who is now Trump’s labor secretary, a Miami Herald investigative report revealed in November. Under the deal, Epstein avoided a potential life sentence in prison and instead pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges. He served just 13 months in a private wing of a Palm Beach County jail where he was allowed to go to his “comfortable” office and work for 13 hours a day, six days a week. The deal also kept prosecutors from telling the victims about Epstein’s plea arrangement until after a judge approved it, the Miami Herald added.

The Miami Herald’s investigative report brought renewed attention to Epstein’s alleged crimes and to how his connections to political and business leaders, media figures and other celebrities could have made such a “sweetheart deal” possible. Epstein was known to entertain his high-flying friends on his private Caribbean island or at the Gatsby-like parties he threw at his homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and Palm Beach.

In addition to Trump and Prince Andrew, Epstein’s other famous friends include Bill Clinton and Harvard law professor and attorney Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein in his original sex trafficking case.

Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times, the New York Times reported, citing flight records. Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that Epstein, whose Palm Beach mansion was near his Mar-a-Lago Club, was “a lot of fun to be with.”

Trump added: “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Neither Trump nor Clinton has been accused of taking part in sexual misdeeds related to Epstein, the Washington Post reported in 2017. Trump also banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago “because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” an attorney for one of Epstein’s alleged victims said in court documents, the Washington Post added.

Andrew’s friendship with Epstein goes back to the 1990s, according to a 2015 Guardian report. But in 2011, he was forced to step down from his prominent position as the special U.K. representative for trade after it was alleged that Epstein had once hooked him up with a 17-year-old girl.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre alleged in a 2011 Daily Mail interview and in lawsuits and other court filings over the years that her contacts with Andrew occurred in the early 2000s, according to the Daily Mail and the Guardian.

One court document, obtained by the Guardian, alleged that Epstein forced Roberts “to have sexual relations” on three separate occasions with “a member of the British Royal Family, Prince Andrew (a/k/a Duke of York).” The encounters are alleged to have happened in New York, in London and in the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of an “orgy with numerous other under-aged girls.”

The document also said that Epstein allegedly instructed Roberts “to give the prince whatever he required” and report back on the details of “the sexual abuse,” the Guardian said.

“Epstein’s purposes in ‘lending’ (young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain,” the document alleged, “as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.”

Buckingham Palace never denied Andrew’s friendship with Epstein, but insisted the prince never had any sexual contact with Giuffre, the Guardian said.

Still, the allegations against Andrew further enhanced the prince’s reputation for falling into what Vanity Fair called a dissolute lifestyle and a habit of currying friendships and financial favors from unsavory international figures. Andrew’s reputation wasn’t helped when he reportedly renewed his friendship in 2011 with Epstein after the financier’s release from jail in Florida.

The New York Post reported in 2011 how Epstein returned to New York City and made wisecracks about his conviction, flippantly telling a reporter, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender.'” Epstein further explained, “It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”

Epstein showed that he was apparently so unbothered about being a sex offender that he threw a big party at his Upper East Side mansion with Andrew, the Post reported.