Andrew hiding from questioning, US congressman says

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been “hiding” from a US government committee’s request to question him, a congressman has reportedly said.

Suhas Subramanyam is one of the Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee, which has requested that the former prince sit for a “transcribed interview” about his connections with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

A letter sent to Andrew by the committee 10 days ago, and signed by 16 members of Congress, has requested that he responds by this Thursday.

Mr Subramanyam told The Guardian that the former duke “has been hiding from us, and I think he will continue to try to hide from people doing meaningful investigations of this matter”.

“It seems like every time we find more evidence, prince Andrew seems to be in the documents,” he added.

“And so I think if he is hoping that the story will just go away by ignoring us and being silent, he will be sorely disappointed, as we continue to pursue this over the next year and beyond.”

US President Donald Trump has said House Republicans should vote to release the files in the Epstein case, reversing his previous vow to fight the proposal.

“We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” Mr Trump posted on social media on Sunday.

Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing for a measure that would force the US Justice Department to make more documents from the case public.

All files and communications related to Epstein could be made public, as well as information about the investigation into his suicide in prison in 2019.

The oversight committee in the House of Representatives asked Andrew to sit for a deposition as part of its investigation into Epstein and how the government handled his case.

The committee’s letter said it had identified “financial records containing notations such as ‘massage for Andrew’ that raise serious questions”.

They have called for him to say what he knew about the actions of the convicted sex trafficker.

Andrew, who was stripped of his prince and Duke of York titles earlier this month, strenuously denies any wrongdoing.

He had previously agreed to stop using his titles but had expected to remain a prince and retain his dukedom, ahead of the publication of the memoirs of the late Virginia Giuffre, who had accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. He denies the accusation.

Damaging newspaper allegations also include that he had tried to get the Metropolitan Police to dig up dirt for a smear campaign against Ms Giuffre.

The force previously said it was looking into the reports after The Mail On Sunday newspaper claimed he had passed Ms Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his taxpayer-funded bodyguard in 2011 and asked him to investigate.