It would be basically symbolic. The chances of it being a real issue are minuscule, King Ralph notwithstanding.
Well yes. But imagine replacing Charles and Andrew with trump and his hypothetical younger brother. How do you suppose the announcements from the White House might differ from those from Buckingham?
That was my real point.
It won’t rope him in. But we know what he was doing. Boxes of confidential top secret stuff in a bathroom that had a copier in it?
Charles had to say pretty much exactly what he said by law. If the individual in the White House faced actual legal consequences, he’d say something similar.
The particular difficulty (or irony, if you prefer) for Charles is that even in Commonwealth countries outside of Britain that have constitutional monarchies, prosecutions are conducted by “the Crown” and in the name of the reigning monarch. So in effect, if you look at the formal written words, King Charles is prosecuting his own brother. In reality, of course, the reference to the monarch is purely symbolic. I doubt that Queen Elizabeth had much interest in the speeding ticket I got 20 years ago, but, on paper, she was quite invested in it!
Seems like the arrest was accompanied by a search warrant - so presumably the arrest was felt necessary to effect prompt extraction of the suspect to prevent him from destroying evidence (which he might have had a chance to do, if it was just an invitation for a little chat at the station).
Has anybody reported on exactly what Andrew did?
Apparently, he had some info and gave it to the wrong persons. But what info, and how did it damage the British public?
He was ,of course, a state official. But what actual responsibilities did he have? What committees did he sit on? What kind of info did he have?
–Military secrets? (if so, why? what was his job in the Navy)
—Financial secrets? (more likely…but if so, what secrets, and what was the reason for telling him?Did he have a “need to know”,like, say, the cabinet ministers do–even though Andrew was not minister?
And what damage did Andrew cause by sharing this info, and with whom did he share it?
All this will become public when Andrew is tried in court. But so far, I haven’t seen anything except articles about the how shocking and unprecedented it is to arrest a royal.
But we still don’t know why..
He was a trade envoy. He met with counterparts in other countries to make agreements and discuss mutual cooperation. His senior functionaries would create reports out of the visits that were meant only for the eyes of British government officials and possibly leaders of major British corporations. He sent copies of those documents to Epstein over email.
So on the one hand I can’t believe, given the slow development of this situation, and the ample warming he has had that his future could possibly involve police scrutiny, that he has actually left incriminating material lying around his house. On the other hand, I absolutely can believe he was dumb enough to do exactly that.
He just moved from a twenty room mansion to five bedroom mansion a few days ago while he awaits the nicer five bedroom mansion to be fixed up. Most stuff must have still been in boxes. I bet he has copies of stuff that was classified. He never thought it would come to this.
Is this still “alleged” or is it established fact? Even if there is incriminating evidence in the Epstein files, the facts would still have to be established in court.
Good question. The reporting is kind of a mess but I think the emails are in the files but maybe without the actual attachements.
Under what authority did he act as trade envoy? Andrew wasn’t an elected official.
Did he have legally binding authority to, say, sign documents in the name of the British government? Or was he more like Hunter Biden, who was just a sleazy businessman using his father’s name to enrich himself personally.(but had no real effect on the American public)?
I’m getting way out of my depth here but this appears to be an appointed position working for the government akin to working at an embassy. He had actual knowledgeable people working under him who did the real work which seems to be preparing reports.
The British government. He wasn’t elected - he was appointed, just like an ambassador. Like many lesser ambassador posts it was essentially a sinecure. He was an nonsalaried but all-expenses paid semi-professional glad-hander. Said expenses were large - wikipedia lists 620,000 pounds on travel, food and entertaining in 2010 alone.
A truly onerous job for a known party-animal. Party-animal by appointment to the Queen (let’s call her mum).
I would be very surprised if this leads to anything more. Andrew knows what Andrew did. I doubt he knows the inner workings of Epstein’s business. At best he might have heard some inadmissible hearsay about others. If Epstein was trading or blackmailing for secrets it doesn’t make sense to be telling other people what those secrets were.
I wasn’t so much thinking that Andrew will tell them anything, but that the same research that led to finding this might lead to finding other stuff.
But also, even if we don’t learn what Epstein was up to, political conspiracies are more interesting that raping children. The later is just gross and depressing.
There was no mistake on their end. I went and listened to Morning Edition on npr.org. The reporter said “eighth” and there was nothing wrong with her pronunciation.
In my defense, this was at 7:10 am and I had just woken up.
It seems likely. I doubt Epstein was worth half a billion dollars by picking stocks with public information. It just depends on who else was stupid enough to send it to his gmail. Hopefully there are more to come.