A Royal Arrest and Global Fallout Over Epstein

From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. In the weeks since the Justice Department released millions of documents in the Epstein files, Executives have lost their companies. Lawyers have resigned. But it was unclear who, if anyone, would face any kind of legal consequence. That changed on Thursday when Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, Duke of York, was arrested in England. But the former Prince may never face legal accountability for many of the criminal allegations that have dogged him for years. Today, my colleagues Michael Shear and Nicholas Confessore explain why the former prince was arrested, how the blast radius for this scandal has widened, and why, to many people, consequences still feel so elusive. It's Friday, February 20. So, Michael, we are here to talk to you today because it feels like arguably one of the biggest shoes to drop has happened in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And specifically, we're talking about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew of the British royal family. He was arrested. Tell us what happened and what he was arrested for. You're right. It was really an explosive moment here in Britain where the public has been following Andrew's travails for a long time. At 08:00 in the morning, police arrived at the Sandringham Estate, which is a country estate favored by the king and many members of his family, and they arrested Andrew. They arrested the former prince, took him into custody under suspicion of what they called misconduct in public office. And what does that mean? What that basically means is that when you were serving in public office, you did something wrong. You broke the law as part of your duties, your official duties. Now, the police did not provide any details of the investigation, but the arrest came after reports suggested that Andrew may have shared confidential information with mister Epstein while serving as the British trade envoy, which he held from 2001 to 2011. All of this feels kind of astonishing when you consider a couple of things. One, how long there have been accusations of sexual misconduct against former prince Andrew? And number two, how long we've known that he's associated with Jeffrey Epstein? Like, the fact that he is being arrested for potentially leaking confidential information, that kind of feels almost like going after Al Capone for tax evasion. You're totally right. It is pretty remarkable. And the allegations of, inappropriate sexual behavior have been in the ether in the public consciousness for more than a decade. I mean, it dates back to when Virginia Giuffre accused prince Andrew at the time in 2015 of having been forced to have sex with him on three separate occasions in London, New York, and on Jeffrey Epstein's private island in the Caribbean Between 2001 and 2002, that was when she was just 17 years old. So that's literally how long the public has been aware of the serious …