In late 2021, Prince Andrew’s legal team pinned their hopes on what they called a “secret document” — a 2009 settlement agreement between Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre — to try to have her civil lawsuit against him dismissed. The document, kept sealed for years, revealed that Giuffre had accepted a $500,000 payment from Epstein and had agreed to release “any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant” from liability. Andrew’s lawyers seized on that vague phrasing, arguing that it protected him as one of those unnamed individuals. For a brief moment, it looked like a technicality that might give him an escape hatch.

But when the agreement was unsealed in January 2022, it turned out to be far weaker than Andrew had claimed. The contract didn’t name him directly, and the judge ruled that the language was too broad and ambiguous to apply. The “secret document” that his team had touted as a silver bullet quickly turned into another embarrassment, underscoring just how desperate his legal strategy had become. The court rejected his motion to dismiss, allowing the lawsuit to move forward and forcing the prince closer to an eventual settlement. What he thought would save him only served to remind the world that even royalty can’t hide behind vague legal loopholes forever.


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