A legendary royal correspondent has spilled the details of a wild party at Sandringham Estate attended by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell that former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor previously downplayed as a simple “shooting weekend.”
Royal biographer Robert Jobson revealed to the Daily Beast’s The Royalist Podcast that the event held at the late Queen Elizabeth’s sprawling Norfolk estate in 2000 left staffers “appalled” when they came in to clean up—contrary to Andrew’s claims that it was a “straightforward” weekend.
In 2019, the BBC confronted Andrew, now 66, about a party he threw for Maxwell, now 64, at the Sandringham Estate in 2000. The disgraced royal previously said he had known Maxwell since she was in university and later met Epstein through her.
“It was a shooting weekend,” he said at the time. “Just a straightforward shooting weekend.”
“At the time, there was no indication to me or anybody else that that was what he was doing,” he later said of Epstein, adding that “nothing” about the notorious pedophile struck him as suspicious during that period.
But Jobson, dubbed the “Godfather of Royal Reporting” and author of The Windsor Legacy, said there was more to the party than Andrew let on.
“It was far from straightforward and the staff were appalled by what they had to be involved with and actually witnessed,” he told The Royalist host Tom Sykes.
“When I wrote the book, I was told by the source that actually they were appalled at having to clear up all these things that were distributed amongst the guests,” Jobson revealed. “They included sex drugs like poppers and condoms and lube and all this sort of stuff, which wasn’t really the sort of thing they expect to be dealing with—the Palace staff—two weeks before all the royals descended on them for Christmas when the Queen would be turning up.”
“But it was actually worse than that,” he went on. “It later transpired that, actually, they were like party bags. They were given out by the host. We can only presume the host is Andrew—because he was there at his mother’s house—to give to all the guests. So this was a little surprise when they arrived. They’re turning the Sandringham, the queen’s private home into, like, the Playboy Mansion. It was pretty awful.”
The late queen traditionally spent the holidays at the mansion located deep in the rural county of Norfolk. Andrew was exiled from the Royal Lodge in Windsor to the Sandringham Estate last year after losing his royal title over ties to Epstein.
In December, Sky News reported that an image of Maxwell and Andrew unearthed from the Justice Department’s Epstein file dump was taken at Sandringham.
The photo showed Maxwell laughing as she smiled down at Andrew, who was lying across the laps of five people whose faces had been redacted.
“We can only presume, I suppose, Epstein taking the picture,” Jobson said. “Look, it was quite shocking, I think. The staff, you know, they’re not easily shocked that much, but I think they were more appalled by the whole what was going on more than anything. And can you imagine what the late queen would have thought? I’m not sure that she would have been overly impressed.”
King Charles stripped his brother Andrew of his royal title following massive blowback over his ties to Epstein. Maxwell, meanwhile, is serving a 20-year sentence in a minimum-security Texas jail.
As for what Charles knew about Andrew and Epstein, Jobson said the former Prince of Wales spoke to his brother about the relationship around 2013 or 2014, when the controversy was drawing intense scrutiny.
“I know that the king and then-Prince of Wales, but the king now—and Andrew had a conversation in which he gave guarantees that he had not been involved in, I’ll quote here, ‘anything untoward,’” he said.
Buckingham Palace and Maxwell’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Andrew no longer has official press representation, but a media advisor thought to still be in contact with him was approached for comment. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein or Maxwell.
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