'ATTERSON

## FILTHY RICH

oligarchs, corrupt presidents of
Mu'ammar Gadhafi, among other
h were explored in a Vanity Fair
ITH ANDREW.

eing loyal to his friends," a "royal Tard Klein. "Take his feelings for rince and you bring a woman into ⚫ reasons, she's spit out, you might ier. The duke feels that she's been ose relationship with the Duchess ere have been many problems over hich stem from the duchess. Some ;s is inconsistent with being mar- luke. There's no question but that -destructive element in the duke's

y manifested itself last December, n at his home in New York," said a n Palace. "Epstein was a friend of of 20 years. It was the first time in stein. He now recognizes that the wise."

noto of the two of them together," Isay. t the prince's dealings with Jeffrey ein's town house, the prince dished nephew Prince William to Kate s dinner companions were so inter-

ested in every detail," a guest in attendance told a New York Post gossip columnist. "What would Kate wear, what would the Queen wear, would his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson be invited?"

Other guests in attendance that night included Chelsea Han- dler, George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose, Katie Couric, and Woody Allen.

At around the same time, Jeffrey Epstein told the New York Post, "I'm not a sexual predator, I'm an 'offender.' It's the differ- ence between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel."

Was it so remarkable that Prince Andrew would have been seen in Epstein's company? Andrew's philandering had been tabloid fodder for years. Randy Andy, they called him in the UK. And in the circles that Jeffrey Epstein moved in, philandering wasn't seen as a vice. Epstein came of age just as industrywide deregu- lation took hold on Wall Street. Junk bonds were king. Call girls were charging ten thousand dollars a night. And in the shadows, you'd see things that would have made Caligula blush. Sights that would make Nero himself reach for the nearest fire extin- guisher. When the urge presented itself, the new super rich didn't have to swap wives.

They could simply swap harems.

By the same token, was it so very strange to think that a man like the prince would have grown so detached from reality- insofar as reality is even a word that applies to a prince? Was it odd that he thought it was absolutely fine to be seen by photog- raphers strolling through Central Park with a registered sex offender-when at the time large swaths of the financial, bank- ing, and trading industries were characterized by their very

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