I warned Prince Andrew it was a bad idea to agree to the interview with Newsnight, lawyer friend says

Prince Andrew was warned it was a “bad idea” for him to discuss his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on Newsnight, a friend revealed yesterday.

Lawyer Paul Tweed said he had advised the Duke of York against speaking to the BBC about his links to the convicted paedophile, then told a senior aide: “Is he crazy? No way, no, no, no.’

He said Andrew ignored his advice and “made up his mind” to tell the broadcaster his version of events.

The disastrous 2019 interview and its fallout basically ended Andrew’s role in public life.

The Duke admitted visiting Epstein shortly after the billionaire financier’s release from prison for soliciting sex with minors, saying that was “the wrong decision.”

Disastrous: Emily Maitlis questions Prince Andrew during now infamous BBC Newsnight interview

He said he had no regrets about his association with Epstein as it had “some very beneficial outcomes” and did not apologize to Epstein’s victims.

The interview is now the focus of a two-part Channel 4 documentary, Andrew: The Problem Prince.

The program features insights from the Newsnight team that filmed the interview, journalist Emily Maitlis and producer Sam McAlister, attorneys for one of Epstein’s victims and Andrew’s friends.

Mr Tweed, a defamation lawyer and old friend of the Duke, said he was advised of the plans for the interview a month before it was filmed.

Speaking to Andrew as a friend, he said, “Look, that wouldn’t be a good idea, sir.” He then received a call from Andrew’s then Chief of Staff, Amanda Thirsk, saying that the Duke had decided to do the interview.

Mr Tweed told the Channel 4 documentary: ‘I said, ‘Is he angry? No way, no, no, no. That’s a bad idea. You shouldn’t do it’.

Amanda just said, ‘Look, Paul, I have to go. I will call you later’. The phone was put down abruptly and that was it.

“So the duke had clearly, for better or for worse, made up his mind.

‘He was going to do it. The duke made that decision on his own, against most advice.’

Mr Tweed said Andrew was “a very decent, straightforward person” but believed he had been “very naive” in his dealings with Epstein.

He said the relationship was “totally misjudged, totally inappropriate” and he believed Epstein snapped an infamous photo of himself with the Duke in New York’s Central Park in 2010.

Epstein had served an 18-month sentence for soliciting sex from an underage girl in Florida, and had been released from prison just months before Andrew visited him in New York.

He was later found dead in his prison cell in 2019 awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Mr Tweed, who has represented Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in civil proceedings, said the effect of the Newsnight interview on the Duke and his family was ‘appalling’ but believed he could return to public life, saying: “I would never say never, anyway.”

In the Newsnight interview, Andrew denied claims by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts, that she was trafficked into having sex with him in 2001 when she was 17.

He told Mrs Maitlis that he had no recollection of meeting Mrs Roberts, and that he was at a birthday party at a Pizza Express in Woking on the day she said they met.

He also denied that she remembered him sweating profusely as they danced in a central London nightclub, insisting he had been unable to sweat after suffering an ‘adrenaline overdose’ during the Falklands War.

Andrew reportedly paid a £9.6 million settlement to Ms Roberts after she filed a civil lawsuit in New York accusing him of sexual assault, though he continues to deny any wrongdoing.

Ms Roberts’ lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, said the Newsnight interview gave her a “road map to tear him apart” in the civil claim.