UK journalist attacks America's 'culture of complete impunity'

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media on board Air Force One en route to Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

British police released former Prince Andrew on Thursday after 11 hours in custody, with his shocking arrest earlier in the day making him the first senior British royal to be arrested in nearly 400 years. Police are probing his connections to the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and whether he shared classified government information with him while serving as a U.K. trade representative from 2001 to 2011. King Charles’ brother, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after being stripped of his royal title, is the most high-profile figure in the U.K. to be implicated in a widening scandal over ties to Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 awaiting trial on sex trafficking. Authorities did not reference sexual abuse allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor or Epstein’s sex trafficking case; Mountbatten-Windsor settled a lawsuit with Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre in 2022 and has denied all wrongdoing.

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr says this week’s arrest feels like a “rupture” in British society because the royals are seen as “sacrosanct” and rarely subjected to such treatment. “And in America, what are we seeing? We’re seeing this sort of culture of complete impunity, where it appears the law is not equal, where there are people who are above it.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We begin today’s show in London following the arrest of former Prince Andrew on Thursday. He was held in police custody for 11 hours before being released in the latest fallout from the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Andrew is the brother of King Charles and the son of the late Queen Elizabeth. The former prince is the first senior member of the royal family to be arrested in almost 400 years.

Police are investigating whether he committed misconduct in public office by sharing confidential government documents with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as U.K. trade envoy, a breach of the Official Secrets Act. King Charles has said he will give his “full and wholehearted support” to the investigation, saying “the law must take its course.” Andrew’s ties to Epstein have been known for years.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who died last year in an apparent suicide, said she was forced to have sex with the prince three times beginning when she was 17. On Thursday, Virginia’s brother Sky Roberts and his wife Amanda responded to the arrest of the former prince.

SKY ROBERTS: Moving forward, we don’t know but we we are hopeful. I think we’re very hopeful that this is the start of the domino effect. This is where the house of cards starts falling. And kudos to the U.K. for taking the first step. For saying, you know what? We are going to arrest somebody who is held to one of the highest esteems out there, somebody who was a former prince. I mean, this hasn’t been before, and so to know what we should expect, it’s really naive to say that we do. But we won’t stop. Virginia said it so clearly in her statements and I will say it again here today: We won’t stop until justice is served.

AMANDA ROBERTS: We are trailing too far behind in justice, especially when we are sitting on the mountains of information that we have. Whether this administration likes it or not, it is sitting at your doorstep. You do not have a choice now, OK? The world is looking at us to do the right thing here. And if they can’t do the right thing, they should resign.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Amanda Roberts and her husband Sky Roberts, the brother of Virginia Roberts Giuffre. We go now to London where we are joined by Carole Cadwalladr, award-winning investigative journalist whose Substack is How to Survive the Broligarchy. She gained international recognition for her exposé on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018. Carole is also the co-founder of an independent news outlet called The Nerve launched with five former Guardian journalists. Carole, welcome back to Democracy Now!

First, this news of the last 24 hours that the former Prince Andrew, the brother of the king, was arrested on his 66th birthday. The picture of him as he was released after 11 hours, now under investigation with his homes being raided, is startling. It’s stunning. To say the least, a deer caught in headlights. Explain the significance of this moment for British society when a senior royal has not been arrested in, what, over 400 years.

CAROLE CADWALLADR: Hi Amy. Thanks so much for having me back. Yeah, it feels like a really significant moment in Britain. And almost a rupture, because the royals have been sacrosanct in Britain. They are treated with such reverence and respect by the British media. I think in all honesty, we didn’t see this coming because it just hasn’t happened before. So it was definitely a sort of incredible moment in Britain. That image that you refer to, that is splashed across every single newspaper in Britain this morning, across the tabloids. I think it is sort of indelible now, that photo. It is going to be a sort of a moment in time, I think.

But I think the thing that I would say is that this isn’t just an incredible moment in Britain. It is an even more incredible moment in America. Because we are the old country, we are the country with a monarchy, with absolute rule that you had to have a revolution to get away from. And yet here we are, arresting an only very recently former prince. And in America, what are we seeing? We are seeing this sort of culture of complete impunity where it appears the law is not equal, where there are people who are above it. So I think it is less a moment of reckoning for Britain, because we are doing the right thing. I mean, I think we are proud of it. It shows that we are equal before the law. I think in America, it is hugely embarrassing, it’s significant, and it should be a wake-up call.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, the former prince, Andrew, was not arrested over assaulting this teenager, assaulting Virginia Giuffre. In her book Nobody’s Girl and when she was alive, she talked about how he knew she was underage because someone said to him, “Do you know how old she is? What’s your guess?” And he said, “17.” But he has been arrested for passing on information that could financially benefit Jeffrey Epstein. The same is the case with Peter Mandelson, who is the former U.K. ambassador to Washington, D.C. Very close to the prime minister, Starmer, leading to questions in British society, the possibility of the toppling of Starmer for not having Mandelson investigated properly. But he, too, was a trade envoy for Britain and he, too, now that these emails have come out, is being investigated for passing on financial information, something that really increased Epstein’s power over so many as he networked both bringing in underage girls and women to be assaulted in the United States or in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but also just creating this network of people that gained financially from knowing Epstein.

CAROLE CADWALLADR: Sorry, Amy, you are absolutely completely right there. The tragedy of it is the thing I think to really hang onto in this moment. As you say, the police did not arrest and question Prince Andrew for the alleged crimes which Virginia Giuffre retold in that book. I mean, it’s heartrending, really, because what if they had? What if she had been believed? What if there had been accountability while she was still alive? So I think the debt that we owe to Virginia Giuffre, her courage, her strength in telling this story, it is why we are here now. And it’s just a terrible, terrible indictment that it wasn’t because a woman’s word was sufficient for this investigation to take place; It was what on the surface of it are lesser, less significant crimes that we are now having sort of the wheels of justice turning.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, as you are talking, Carole, we are showing that famous, famous photograph of Andrew, the man formerly known as Prince, with his arm around Virginia Giuffre standing next to Ghislaine Maxwell. I think it was in Ghislaine Maxwell’s apartment in London when she was first assaulted by the former prince. And you see a flash in the window reflected beyond them because Epstein is taking this picture on Virginia’s own camera. She asked for it—incredibly, prophetically—and this is what has taken him down.

You also have, here in the United States, Les Wexner, who is the former head of Victoria’s Secret, Limited, L Brands, being questioned at his Ohio mansion by the House Oversight Committee. Interestingly, no Republican went for that questioning even though when they put out the video yesterday I think there was a picture emblazoned across the video—”GOP oversight.” I want to go to the clip. You can hear Wexner’s lawyer, as he is being questioned by the congressmembers, saying, “I’ll effing kill you if you answer another question in more than five words.”

LES WEXNER: It was just regularly done.

MICHAEL LEVY: I will [bleeping] kill you if you answer another question with more than five words, OK?

LES WEXNER: [laughs]

MICHAEL LEVY: Answer the question. OK.

PERSON: A discrete question on a different topic.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, amazing that we can hear this over the mic, the lawyer warning him. But this goes to a bigger point and it goes to the word, part of the title of your Substack, the Broligarchy. On the one hand you have Andrew being arrested, and in this country the man that bankrolled him, possibly to the tune of billions of dollars, how he had his mansion in New York, how he had his island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and his mansions now being investigated, the Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, and using Ohio, the mention of Les Wexner. He could possibly maybe have had even this huge sex trafficking network that has led now to a sex trafficking investigation in as far as Latvia, and the former prime minister of Norway being investigated, two investigations in France being opened. But this, Les Wexner hearing this and having the U.S. Attorney General saying “There are no investigations, the case is closed,” even though they haven’t released another 3 million pages, and President Trump saying, “See? I’ve been exonerated.”

CAROLE CADWALLADR: Amy, you are so completely right. I think that if you don’t look at this story about Epstein and see that it is part of something much, much bigger, if you don’t connect it to the political moment that America is in and the absence of inquiry and leadership and actual accountability in any sense around this story—I wrote a piece and I said, “It’s the dog that doesn’t bark.” And if it doesn’t bark now, it is not going to bark when the midterm elections come and what many people I think see is going to be a sort of authoritarian assault on them. I think you don’t want to look back and look back at this moment and see that there is this moment in which Congress didn’t act, in which the press didn’t summon the necessary sort of fire and fury, and realize that, actually, it’s a bellwether, it’s a sign, it’s this culture of impunity.

And so I think that’s my sort of message from here in Britain, in this old class-ridden society that, as I say, you had to have a revolution to get away from. We are actually able in this moment to show that there is accountability, to show that people are equal before the law, and you are not. You no longer can. America is no longer the land of the free. Your constitution is breaking down in real time. And I think Epstein is such a symbol of this. And I think in exactly the same way that these women were not believed, that it took these files to come out for suddenly people to go, oh, actually, it turns out that it was not only true that it went to a far, far, far bigger scandal and story than we realized. It feels like a parallel moment in that you’re not actually believing what they are telling you now, what the story is telling you now. You are still in complete denial over it.

I am speaking here, as I say, from this vantage point in London and saying this should be the moment when you realize that—you know this thing, “The call is coming from inside the house”? That actually you really need to step up now. And if you cannot realize that this huge, vast, money laundering, international sex trafficking operation that involves every single institution in your country—it involves banks, it involves people who are part of the government, it involves people who are part of the press. It’s everywhere. And I know it must feel kind of overwhelming because it is so pervasive, but I think really the thing which is missing I suppose is this sort of leadership in being able to signal this and call it out and to demand that the steps are taken now.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, we just have 30 seconds, but you just republished “The US Coup: one year on.” Explain why.

CAROLE CADWALLADR: Because, well, a year ago I published this article in which I put what I thought should have been the headline on the front pages of The New York Times which was, “It’s a Coup.” And I did that because historians of authoritarianism—Tim Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat—they were calling it out. They were saying that the overturning of the rule of law and this sort of blitzkrieg of executive orders that Trump was doing, they said, “This is a coup.”

The thing which, the vantage point that I came from in my work of looking at the way that data is used, it was the assault by DOGE, the illegal assault by DOGE on the U.S. Treasury in which they illegally captured and data harvested the personal data of the entire U.S. population. Then they went to do that across the U.S. government. Now in the age in which we live, knowledge is power and data is knowledge, and that power was being concentrated in, as I said, this totally illegal data gathering operation. That for me is the foundation of a surveillance state. That is what we can see now coming into being. That is what is happening in Minnesota.

And I think it’s really important to mark these landmarks, that we are a year on from that moment and nothing has got better, everything has got worse. This is now consolidating and you’re now in the final stretch. You now have—it is months now, not years, in terms of the midterm elections, really. Is that going to be a performative election in which it is going to look like democracy as it is in Hungary, as it is in Turkey? Or do you have a chance now to save your country? I think it is really, really uncertain. There is still time, but you have to recognize the moment that you’re in, and I think there’s a lot of people out there who still aren’t.

AMY GOODMAN: Carole Cadwalladr, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning investigative journalist. We will link to your Substack, How to Survive the Broligarchy:https://broligarchy.substack.com/. Gained international recognition for her exposé on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018. Co-founder of independent news outlet The Nerve, launched with five former Guardian journalists.

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