Robert Garcia, top Democrat on House oversight panel, makes formal request in letter published Thursday

A US congressional panel investigating pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein has written to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly Britain’s Prince Andrew, to ask that he submit to questioning as part of its investigation into Epstein’s criminal operations.

In a letter published on Thursday, California congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, requested that King Charles III’s younger brother help with its inquiry.

The formal request to answer questions comes a week after Mountbatten Windsor was stripped of his royal title and agreed to give up his leased home in Windsor.

Mountbatten Windsor’s name appears in documents and flight logs subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate and publicly released by the committee. He has also been accused by one of Epstein’s victims of assault, the late Virginia Giuffre, of sexual assault.

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“The oversight committee will investigate allegations of abuse by Mountbatten Windsor, and will seek information on Epstein’s operations, network, and associates based on the men’s longstanding and well-documented friendship,” the committee said in a press release.

It demanded information from Mountbatten Windsor on specifics of his relationship with Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019. Andrew has always strongly denied any wrongdoing.

“It has been publicly reported that your friendship with Mr Epstein began in 1999 and that you remained close through and after his 2008 conviction for procuring minors for prostitution,” the letter said.

It continued: “It has also been reported that you traveled with Epstein to his New York residence, the Queen’s residence at Balmoral, and to Mr Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, where you have been accused of abusing minors. This close relationship with Mr Epstein, coupled with the recently revealed 2011 email exchange in which you wrote to him ‘we are in this together’, further confirms our suspicion that you may have valuable information about the crimes committed by Mr Epstein and his co-conspirators.”

A notification of the the letter said it was co-signed by 13 other Democrats on the committee and requests a response by 20 November.

The letter comes a week after another Democrat on the committee, Ro Khanna, told the Guardian: “Andrew should be called to testify before the oversight committee. The public deserves to know who was abusing women and young girls alongside Epstein.”

However, Garcia does not possess the power to subpoena the former prince and Congress itself cannot compel testimony from a foreign national.

In 2020, US authorities said that Mountbatten Windsor failed to respond to US requests for an interview. Geoffrey Berman, then US attorney for the southern district of New York, said that prosecutors and the FBI had contacted Andrew’s lawyers to follow up on his previous pledge that he was “willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency”.

“It’s fair for people to know whether Prince Andrew has followed through with that public commitment,” Berman said, adding that to date he had “provided zero cooperation”.

Garcia said in a statement that “rich and powerful men have evaded justice for far too long. Now, former Prince Andrew has the opportunity to come clean and provide justice for the survivors. Oversight Democrats will not stop fighting for accountability and transparency for survivors of Epstein and his gang of co-conspirators.”

Another signatory, Virginia Democrat Suhas Subramanyam, said that after hearing testimony to the committee from Epstein’s victims, as well as public reporting of leaked documents, “it is vital that Andrew cooperates with the ongoing investigation. If he is innocent, then he can clear his name.”

Subramanyam added: “And if not, our investigation will show that, and the victims will receive long overdue justice. The Royal Family’s actions stripping Andrew of his titles show there is more to this story.”

The letter came on the same day the British king officially stripped Mountbatten Windsor of his royal title of prince. Charles III formally made the change – which had been announced a week ago – by issuing a “letters patent” which the crown office published in the Gazette, the UK’s official public record.