What King Charles knew about Andrew could lead to abdication crisis

King Charles was heckled Thursday morning during his first public engagement, shortly following the arrest of his brother, the former Prince Andrew, on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

While arriving at London Fashion Week, one woman in the crowd yelled, “Do you have any reaction to the arrest of your brother, sir?” As Town and Country reported, another person asked: “Your Majesty, how are you feeling after your brother’s arrest? Have you spoken to your brother, Your Majesty?”

The king did not respond to the questions, but he he’s going to have a difficult time avoiding growing public outrage and an onslaught of questions about how much he and the rest of the royal institution knew about his brother’s questionable actions involving Jeffrey Epstein, or during his time as a UK trade envoy, and whether they helped cover up potential crimes.

BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said this crisis for the royal family was “seismic” — Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the first senior royal to be arrested in 400 years — and “they will have to answer questions about (him) and be held accountable, something which, up until now, has been an alien concept for them.”

In a statement, Charles, who reportedly was not given a heads-up about his brother’s arrest, said that the “law must take its course” and that authorities have “our full and wholehearted support and cooperation.”

But there have been recent conversations among other high-profile royal experts about whether Charles’ recent efforts to take a hardline stand against his brother and strip him of his prince title, for example, after years of being conciliatory, have come years too late. There also has been open discussion on whether Charles, who is being treated for cancer, should abdicate in favor of his son, Prince William, who has reportedly long urged his father to distance the family from Andrew.

“I think that there have been calls on radio programs now for (Charles) to use the excuse of his illness to step aside and to give William a chance to clean up the mess since he doesn’t seem to be doing it,” said royal author Andrew Lownie, who penned “Entitled,” a scathing biography of Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson.

“My own feeling is that his reign will be defined by how he deals with (Andrew’s Epstein scandal),” Lownie said on his “The Lownie Report” podcast. “If he is prepared to clean out the stables and give a clean slate to William. Really bite the bullet and be honest about what was known.”

The specter King Edward VIII’s 1936 abdication — cited as the last major existential crisis for the royal family — looms over discussion about Charles abdicating. Tom Sykes, a royal columnist at the Daily Beast, said on his “The Royalist” podcast, prior to Andrew’s arrest: “If it emerges that Charles did know a good bit about what Andrew was doing, I think that we do move to the previously unthinkable situation where Charles has to potentially step down.”

Citing a report in The Sun, Sykes reported last week that Charles could no longer claim “plausible deniability” when it comes to Andrew’s efforts to escape legal accountability for his alleged sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, the most well-known of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged teen trafficking victims.

That’s because Charles, as Prince of Wales, personally contributed around $2 million of a $16 million loan to Andrew, which his younger brother “used to silence” Giuffre in 2022 by enticing her to drop her U.S. lawsuit against him. Andrew has long denied allegations that he sexually abuse Giuffre, or that he even knew her.

It’s believed that the bulk of this loan to Andrew, which funded his out-of-court settlement with Giuffre, was paid by the late Queen Elizabeth II, according to The Sun. By reaching a settlement, Andrew also was spared having to testify in court, after he had already set off three years of damaging publicity for the British royal family because of emerging revelations about his friendship with Epstein.

But if Charles had a role in paying for Giuffre’s settlement, that “makes it clear that he and his office were fully involved in covering up Andrew’s behavior,” Sykes on his Royalist Substack. Sykes speculated that Charles didn’t want Giuffre’s sex abuse lawsuit to overshadow the queen’s platinum jubilee in June 2022. He also said he heard from a friend of the queen’s that Charles essentially spearheaded the settlement, while his frail 96-year-old mother, who would be dead by September, was in a lot of pain and possibly confused at times.

“This idea that Charles (wasn’t made aware) of what was going on (with Andrew) beggars belief,” Sykes said. “There’s been a a real move to try and protect the king by pinning all the blame on Queen Elizabeth, saying it was her fault and she was far too indulgent (of her reported favorite child).”

“But what I do think is that Charles is certainly not blameless in this,” Sykes, noting that Charles was unofficially co-monarch in the final years of his mother’s life.

Andrew was arrested after years of mounting controversy over his relationship to Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan prison in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. According to the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) website, misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, The Guardian reported.

Claims about Andrew’s scandalous relationship to Epstein have long been in the public domain, raising questions about whether he benefited from Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking operation or the financier’s ties to disreputable international figures. The British police would not release details on the reason for his arrest but the Epstein documents, released by the U.S. Justice Department, suggest the investigation may have to do with whether the former duke improperly shared confidential government documents with Epstein, while serving as a trade envoy from 2001 to 2011.

Andrew was taken into custody Thursday morning — his 66th birthday — shortly after police arrived at Wood Farm on the king’s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk. Andrew had been living there for about two weeks, since Charles ordered him to finally leave his longtime 30-room mansion, Royal Lodge, in Windsor Great Park. Andrew was formally evicted from Royal Lodge in October, at the same time that Charles stripped him of his prince title.

What happens next in Andrew’s case could become legally treacherous for the king, with the implications being “truly life-threatening” for his reign and the monarchy, said author and long-time Daily Mail writer Robert Jobson. It’s possible that Andrew could try and maneuver his way out of any criminal charges by telling investigators, for example, that he kept Charles informed of all or part of his misconduct.

In such a situation, the prosecution could collapse before it reaches trial, Jobson said. The precedent for a collapse is the trial against former royal butler, Charles Burrell, who was accused of stealing some of the late Princess Diana’s personal items and papers. Burrell was able to avoid trial by telling the late Queen Elizabeth he had taken the items for safekeeping.

The British courts are under the authority of the monarch, and therefore cannot call their own monarch as a witness, Jobson explained. For that reason, the case against Burrell fell apart and it could be a precedent for what happens with Andrew.

“Charles understood the threat clearly enough,” Jobson said. “He stripped his brother of his titles. It was an attempt to draw a cordon between Andrew and the House of Windsor.”

But William would not have taken action years prior, sources told Jobson. The Prince of Wales believes that his grandmother, the late queen, indulged Andrew for far too long and his father has been slow to act.