Jeffery Epstein pressed the 'right psychic buttons' with 'useful idiot' Prince Andrew

Jeffrey Epstein was merely using Prince Andrew's royal status to get his way, says royal expert.

Tina Brown in her book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil, shares how Prince Andrew was in reality lonely with a hollow personality. 

"Privately, Epstein told people that Andrew was an idiot, but – to him – a useful one. A senior royal, even if tainted, is always a potent magnet abroad.

"Epstein confided to a friend that he used to fly the Duke of York to obscure foreign markets, where governments were obliged to receive him, and Epstein went along as HRH’s investment adviser. With Andrew as frontman, Epstein could negotiate deals with these (often) shady players."

Epstein ensure Prince Andrew felt equally benefitted from their friendship. 

She wrote: "Epstein always knew the right psychic buttons to press. There was a hollowness in the Duke’s personality. That’s why he laughed louder and boasted so much. He knew that for all the palaces he lived in and the servants who Sir’d him, he was the second son whose childhood parity with Charles was a mirage."

She added: "Epstein deftly exploited Andrew’s sense of grievance. The wife of a financier who sat next to Andrew at an Epstein dinner told me how the Prince suddenly declared: “I don’t know why people don’t pay us royals more respect.

"Epstein made Andrew feel he had joined the big time – the deals, the girls, the plane, the glittering New York world, where he wasn’t seen as a full-grown man still dependent on his mother’s Privy Purse strings or on the harsh pecking order of the Palace," wrote Mr Brown.