How Epstein's Sick Sleaze is Destroying the Royals

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News

4.6 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom Sykes, The Daily Beast’s unmissable Royals columnist, joins Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty to examine how the fallout from Jeffrey Epstein has reignited a crisis around Prince Andrew that now threatens to engulf the wider monarchy. As new scrutiny revisits Andrew’s relationship with Virginia Giuffre and raises questions about what the Palace knew, Sykes argues that King Charles III is confronting a scandal no longer containable by tradition or silence—one already straining relations with heir Prince William and forcing a reckoning over accountability, reputation, and whether the royal family can still rely on deference in an era demanding transparency. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:40.2	One of the extraordinary emails that was uncovered literally shows this extraordinary email chain of Andrew saying to his secretary, Amanda Thursk, can you get me the reports about,
0:45.4	you know, what's going on in this country? She finally gets them, sends them to Andrew. He just sends them on to Epstein. I mean, it is absolutely extraordinary. These sex trafficking allegations
0:51.0	feel to me like they're going to be really complicated to prove many years later.
0:55.4	But I feel that the sharing of confidential information in violation of the Official Secrets Act is really easy to prove because it's happening there in front of our eyes.
1:08.7	Welcome to The Daily Beast podcast. I'm Hugh Doherty. I'm executive editor of The Daily Beast. I'm filling in for Joanna Coles, who is recovering from surgery, but we'll be back soon. And I know is enthusiastically reading the comments. Thank you to everybody who's been wishing her a recovery. We have such an exciting episode coming up for you.
1:30.0	We are going to be talking. I am going to be talking to Tom Sykes. Tom Sykes is the royalist.
1:36.6	He is the Daily Beast authoritative correspondent of all things in the British royal family.
1:42.6	And I just, before we get into it, Tom, I just want to run through some of the things we're
1:46.6	going to talk about.
1:47.5	We're going to talk about Epstein.
1:50.3	We're going to talk about crime, alleged crime, real crime, definite crime, possible crime.
1:57.1	We're only going to talk about family feuds.
1:58.9	We're going to talk about scandals in Britain, in America, in the Middle East.
2:06.5	We're going to talk about Congress.
2:07.9	We're going to talk about the police.
2:09.1	I mean, I can't believe the number of things that the British royal family are involved in.
2:13.9	Welcome.
2:16.7	Thank you for being with us.
2:18.5	Thanks, Hugh.
	...

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