A timeline of former Prince Andrew's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, from the Virginia Giuffre lawsuit to his arrest in 2026

On Thursday, a judge said that search warrants issued at the time of his arrest were unlawful. Still, the Thames Valley Police's investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor's ties to Epstein continues.

Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied any involvement with Epstein's sex-trafficking crimes. However, his relationship with Epstein has been under scrutiny for over a decade, as Virginia Giuffre named him in a lawsuit she filed against Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2015.

King Charles said in a statement at the time of the arrest that "the law must take its course" and that the authorities had the royal family's "full and wholehearted support and co-operation."

1999: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein reportedly met through Ghislaine Maxwell.

As the BBC reported, Ghislaine Maxwell introduced Epstein to Mountbatten-Windsor in 1999.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18, and was sentenced to 18 months. Mountbatten-Windsor visited Epstein in New York in December 2010, just four months after Epstein's release.

April 2015: Virginia Giuffre sued Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation, naming Mountbatten-Windsor in the suit.

In 2015, Virginia Giuffre brought a defamation case against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, alleging that the pair had sex-trafficked her starting in 2000, when she was known as Virginia Roberts.

However, the allegation was thrown out and struck from the record by a judge, who said it was "immaterial and impertinent to the central claim" in the case at the time.

August 2019: Giuffre's allegations were made public when documents from the 2015 case were unsealed.

Further details about Giuffre's allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor were made public in 2019, after documents from the 2015 defamation case were unsealed.

"Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet ... on her lap," Sjoberg was quoted as saying in the documents. "I sat on Andrew's lap, I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet's hands and put it on Virginia's breast, and so Andrew put his on mine."