A major US TV network is facing some tough questions after a video emerged of one of its reporters complaining about her bosses killing a story about billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after threats from Buckingham Palace.

In a “hot mic” video from 2015 that was leaked overnight, ABC News’s Amy Robach can be heard venting that “every day I get more and more pissed” that her 2015 interview with one of Epstein’s alleged victims Virginia Giuffre never made the air.

Camera Icon Amy Robach can be heard complaining about her interview being pulled amid pressure from Buckingham Palace. Credit: AP

Ms Giuffre has claimed she was Epstein’s sex slave from the age of just 16 and that the convicted paedophile forced to have sex with Prince Andrew while on the tycoon’s private island. The royal has always denied the claims.

“We would not put it on the air,” Robach says in the video.

Camera Icon Scandal-hit Prince Andrew has always denied Ms Giuffre’s claims. Credit: AP

“First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’ Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will, that also quashed the story …

“She told me everything, she had pictures, she had everything. She was in hiding for 12 years, we convinced her to come out, we convinced her to talk to us. It was unbelievable what we had.”

In the unaired interview Ms Giuffre is also to have made allegations about former US president Bill Clinton.

ABC said on Tuesday the interview didn’t meet its standards because it lacked sufficient corroborating evidence. Robach said the leaked video caught her “in a private moment of frustration”.

Disgraced financier Epstein was found dead in his New York prison cell earlier this year while awaiting trail on sex trafficking charges involving underage girls.