In her posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Giuffre detailed her encounters with then-Prince Andrew to the best of her memory. She had stronger memories of their first encounter, when she was 17 years old and brought to Ghislaine Maxwell’s London townhouse. Virginia described how Ghislaine informed her what would happen, that Virginia would meet a prince and that Virginia would do whatever the prince wanted, basically. Virginia wanted to document meeting Andrew, so she asked Jeffrey Epstein to take the photo seen above, with Andrew, Virginia and Ghislaine off to the side. It was taken at Ghislaine’s townhouse. When the photo came out years later, Andrew’s friends and supporters spent a lot of time and energy claiming that the photo is fake, that Andrew never even met Virginia and those aren’t his fat fingers. In earlier documents from the Epstein Files, Epstein himself admitted that the photo is real. Well, in newly released documents, Ghislaine admits the same, that the photo is real.

A bombshell email confirms that the infamous photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with his arm around his chief accuser was genuine, it emerged today. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had long disputed the authenticity of the image of him in intimate contact with Virginia Giuffre when she was just 17. And his suggestion that the damning 2001 image may have been faked was central to the defence he tried to put over in his disastrous Newsnight interview.

But today an email came to light from disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in which she said she was ‘stating for the record as fact’ that not only had she introduced the former Prince to Giuffre but that the image was taken at her London home that same night.

Her admission, unearthed by the Daily Mail, will come as a major blow to Andrew, leaving his controversial Pizza Express ‘alibi’ in tatters.

It was made in a series of 2015 emails released in a tranche of more than three million Jeffrey Epstein-related documents by the US Department of Justice last week. Drafting a statement intended to hit back at reports of mounting allegations in the press, disgraced socialite Maxwell had sent Epstein an email asking for his approval.

‘In 2001 I was in London when (redacted) met a number of friends of mine including Prince Andrew,’ she wrote. ‘A photograph was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family. I never asked (redacted) to give him a massage,’ her draft statement added. In the body of the email, she said: ‘I am stating for the record as fact’ before adding: ‘Prince Andrew came to my house to visit me – (redacted) was in the house and they did meet.’

However, she claimed she had ‘no knowledge’ of Ms Giuffre ‘having sexual activity’ with Andrew or any other ‘famous people’.

Epstein replied saying her statement left ‘too many unanswered questions’ adding: ‘Her and andrew?…whats the deal here? why is she there.’

Maxwell insisted that she need the statement ‘asap’ and that she was advised to say ‘I was not aware of massage w/andrew in my house’.

‘These thing they have to stay, along w/meeting virginia and rebutting those allegations. I needs it asap.’

In the email headed ‘first draft privledged joint defense agreement’, Maxwell claims she was compelled to speak out due to the ‘salacious claims’ against her. She says: ‘The allegations made against me by (redacted) are lies. I have consistently stated that they are untrue and I have waited for an opportunity to prove this in a court of law.’

Seeking to discredit Giuffre, who took her own life aged 41 last year, Maxwell stated: ‘The salacious claims she makes are untrue and made purely for financial gain. The relentless media harassment to which I, Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew have been subjected to over the last week has become intolerable and breaches any justifiable sense of natural justice.’

[From The Daily Mail]

It’s sort of grotesquely funny that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein treated the photo as a fact of life and tried to explain their way out of it, meanwhile dim-witted predator Prince Andrew was like “the photo is fake, look at my fingers!” Ghislaine’s emails and draft statements were her attempts to get her story straight with Epstein, and they were trying to figure out how to deal with Virginia and her increasingly loud accusations. Both Epstein and Maxwell would end up settling out of court with Virginia. Years later, Andrew settled out of court with Virginia as well, because he knew that his bullsh-t “those aren’t my fingers” defense wouldn’t hold up.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.