Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is shown introducing paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein to British high society in photographs released in a huge document dump.
The former duke is seen reclining across the legs of five women with his head near one woman’s lap, in a picture reportedly taken at Sandringham, the King’s private estate in Norfolk where Andrew will move from Windsor in the new year.
He is also pictured alongside Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in the royal box at Ascot, and is apparently shown shooting on the Balmoral estate in Scotland.
Other famous faces included in the so-called “Epstein files” released on Friday by the US Department of Justice were Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, popstar Michael Jackson and former US president Bill Clinton.
In one undated image, which is a photograph of a picture in a frame, Maxwell is peering down and smiling at the former duke, who is lying across the laps of five women while smiling with his eyes closed.
The faces of six women in the picture have been redacted with black squares, with the photo taken in The Saloon inside Sandringham, according to Sky News, which compared the fireplace to previous images taken there.
Epstein and Maxwell are also seen pictured with Andrew in the royal box at Ascot in another undated photograph.
In emails previously released by the US House Oversight Committee, Epstein told a journalist Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre is a “fraud”, adding: “You and I will be able to go to ascot (sic) for the rest of our lives.”
In a third photograph featuring the former prince, Andrew appears to take Epstein and Maxwell shooting, standing with his back to the camera holding a hunting rifle at a location widely reported to be on the Balmoral estate
Andrew stepped down from royal duties in 2019 after his disastrous Newsnight interview, but the publication of Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, and the US government’s release of documents from Epstein’s estate, brought more scrutiny over his relationship with the financier.
It led to the King officially stripping his disgraced brother of both his HRH style and his prince title.
US politicians have criticised Andrew for his “silence” after he missed a deadline last month to respond to their request to sit for an interview about Epstein.
A trove of documents, including court records, footage and images, was uploaded on Friday night to the US Department of Justice website, which held users in a queue as it experienced an “extremely high volume of search requests”.
Famous faces such as Jackson, Mr Clinton, US President Donald Trump, Sir Mick Jagger and politician Lord Mandelson have also appeared in the thousands of photographs published online.
Two photos of Andrew’s ex-wife with unidentified females were included in the most recent documents released.
Lord Mandelson, who was sacked from his job as the UK’s ambassador to the US earlier this year, is seen in a picture with Epstein who is being presented with a giant birthday cake.
Sir Mick, the frontman of the Rolling Stones, was photographed with former US president Mr Clinton where they both had an arm around an unknown woman whose face had been redacted with a black square.
Maxwell, Mr Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey were also pictured in Sir Winston Churchill’s War Rooms, while Jackson is seen posing next to Epstein in front of a painting.
A picture of Mr Clinton in a hot tub with an unidentified woman, and another photo of him with his arm around a woman in a white vest were released on Friday night.
Also among the hundreds of photos included in the files are undated photos of Maxwell standing outside the door of 10 Downing Street.
None of the photographs suggest any wrongdoing and they are all undated.
The data dump came after US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said the need to protect the victims of sex offender Epstein meant hundreds of thousands more documents would be released over the coming weeks.
The US Department of Justice was legally obligated to make all files related to the investigation into Epstein public by midnight on Friday following the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The paedophile financier was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan, New York, in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
A spokesperson for senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the BBC the document dump “continues this administration’s pattern of protecting President Trump and other perpetrators”.
Mr Clinton’s spokesman Angel Urena said the investigation was not about the former Democrat president.
He said in a statement: “There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that.
“We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”
Many of the photos and documents are heavily redacted, prompting criticism from US politicians and lawyers for Epstein’s victims.
Reacting to the Department of Justice only releasing some of the files, Democrat Suhas Subramanyam, from the US House oversight committee, told CNN: “They are absolutely in violation of the law, they just admitted they were in violation of the law.
“The law said they needed to release everything by today. Not starting today, not part of it today, all of it by today.”
He added: “There’s no excuse for this. They are in violation of the law and we will pursue every possible legal avenue.”
New York senator Chuck Schumer said the “heavily redacted” documents released on Friday were “just a fraction of the whole body of evidence” – adding that pages of blacked out text “violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law”.
