Jeffrey Epstein boasted that Prince Andrew “was an idiot, but—to him—a useful one,” according to a new book by Tina Brown, the founding editor of The Daily Beast. In excerpts of her new book, The Palace Papers, published Monday in the Daily Telegraph, Brown writes that Epstein “used to fly the Duke of York to obscure foreign markets, where governments were obliged to receive him, and Epstein went along as HRH’s investment adviser. With Andrew as his front man, Epstein could negotiate deals with these [often] shady players.” Brown also writes about the relationship between Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. She says Ghislaine’s devotion to Epstein has its roots in her own dysfunctional relationship with her father, the media tycoon Robert Maxwell. Brown says that a 10-year-old Ghislaine invited a visitor to see her bedroom. Brown writes that the visitor “noticed an odd-shaped hairbrush, a strap, a slipper, and other implements laid out on the child’s dressing-room table. Ghislaine said, rather proudly, ‘This is what Daddy uses to beat me with. But he always allows me to choose which one I want.’ In the sadistic offering of power to the powerless, asking her, in essence, to procure herself for her father, one can better understand how Ghislaine fell under the spell of a man like Epstein.”