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‘ATTERSON oligarchs, corrupt presidents of Awammar Gadhafi, among other h were explored in a Vanity Fair ITH ANDREW. eing loyal to his friends,” a “royal rard Klein. “Take his feelings for rince and you bring a woman into - reasons, she’s spit out, you might ter. The duke feels that she’s been yse relationship with the Duchess >re have been many problems over hich stem from the duchess. Some ;s is inconsistent with being mar- juke. There’s no question but that destructive element in the-duke’s y manifested itself last December, ~ nat his home in New York,” said a ~ n Palace. “Epstein was a friend of 7 f 20 years. It was the first time im j stein. He now recognizes that the | wise.” x0to of the two of them together,” | say. t the prince’s dealings with Je ein’s town house, the prince di : nephew Prince William [0 BY ; dinner companions were 50 1 224 Fittuy Ricw ested in every detail,” a guest in attendance told a New York Post gossip columnist. “What would Kate wear, what would the Queen wear, would his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson be invited?” Other guests in attendance that night included Chelsea Han- dler, George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose, Katie Couric, and Woody Allen. At around the same time, Jeffrey Epstein told the New York Post, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender’ It’s the differ- ence between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.” Was it so remarkable that Prince Andrew would have been seen in Epstein’s company? Andrew’s philandering had been tabloid _ fodder for years. Randy Andy, they called him in the UK. And in the circles that Jeffrey Epstein moved in, philandering wasn’t seen as a vice. Epstein came of age just as industrywide deregu- lation took hold on Wall Street. Junk bonds were king. Call girls were charging ten thousand dollars a night. And in the shadows, 7 you'd see things that would have made Caligula blush. Sights ” that would make Nero himself reach for the nearest fire extin- 1 guisher. When the urge presented itself, the new super rich didn’t have to swap wives. They could simply swap harems. By the same token, was it so very strange to think that a man ike the prince would have grown so detached from reality — ‘insofar as reality is even a word that applies to a prince? Was it Odd that he thought it was absolutely fine to be seen by photog- Maphers strolling through Central Park with a registered sex Otlender— when at the time large swaths of the financial, bank- mg, and trading industries were characterized by their very 225 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022122