I want expecting to develop begrudging respect for England today.
I did not expect this.
Sadly, this proves that even the infamously evil ROYAL FAMILY has more integrity than Trump and our politicians (including Democrats).
Which is fucking terrifying, really. Brace yourselves, keep your chin up, and all of that
Someone on bluesky said that SCOTUS has made American presidents less accountable than British monarchs
Perhaps King Charles has had enough of his sick fuck brother. Slow castration with hot oil is in order and since the UK does not have the death penalty, a dungeon with public viewing is in order.
Funny how I knew it wasn’t in America not because of the name, but because someone in public office went into custody.
Many Democrats have been arrested. The fascist political persecution is already in full swing.
He’s being arrested for sharing official documents. Not the disgusting crimes he committed against children and/or women. It’s not real accountability, it’s theater meant to placate the angry masses.
I read some analysis on this in the guardian, it predicted this would happen, because the police have limited resources and can only follow up one of the two charges. This charge is chosen because there is far more likely to be incontrovertible evidence, probably in the form of paper trails etc. Whereas proving he raped children decades ago relies on witness testimony, which is far easier for his very expensive (taxpayer-funded, mind) lawyers to talk down in court.
If this cunt sees a single day in prison I call that a win.Trump had crates full of official documents in his bathroom and nobody touched him in four years.
theater meant to placate the angry masses
Thousands of years into our civilization and the oldest tricks still work the best. The more things change and all that.
edit: that said, Epstein was almost definitely working as a double-agent between various organizations, maybe a quadruple agent or more, he wasn’t so well-connected and powerful just because he dealt children, he also dealt secrets between superpowers, so just having contact with him as a state official puts a massive spotlight on you as a security risk.
National governments care a lot more about you being a security risk than they do about you hurting kids.
The penalty is mostly fines. Even sharing military secrets in UK is only 2 years. WTF Brits.
I wonder if he’s finally sweating now.
The grand old Duke of York
he had 12 million quid
He gave it to someone he’d never met
for something he never did
Well actually it was the taxpayer that had 12 million quid, then gave it to a sweaty nonce for some ungodly reason
But tourism or something
glad the queen is rotting in hell
Finally! An arrest!
Meanwhile in america: {crickets, followed by a tumbleweed blowing across a sand covered road
And that’s after the obese orange child rapist was best friends with Epstein for decades, and has been mentioned many thousands of times, with thousands of pictures, and numerous sexual accusations all in the Epstein files.
The fat cunt could shoot a baby live on TV and no fucker would do a thing about it.Yeah, but have you considered the Dow? The Dow is at 50$… or something.
It’s incredibly conspicuous that Trump hasn’t arrested anyone over this. He’ll take any opportunity to persecute his perceived enemies, and plenty of them are in the files. He sues people over absolutely nothing. It’s weird that not one prosecution has gone down. He’ll probably even pardon Maxwell.
There is more happening on a global level from the findings in the Epstein files then there is in the US. The US just gets tweets and soundbites on the news. The US is a joke.
Especially when the US justice system nailed Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein with fewer adult(?) victims.
Sadly, as I understood from a report I saw this morning, it’s not in connection to his pedophilia but to sending highly sensitive gov docs to Epstein which may have been used for financial gain.
And they arrested and imprisoned Al Capone for tax evasion. The important part is they arrested him, and secondly that it was for something related to Epstein. Hopefully the ensuing investigation will cause more details to be revealed and a wider reckoning to occur, but either way, he’s no longer free.
which still comes from the Epstein files right?
But at least he’s been arrested for something
Always has been
As an American I find this confusing to arrest a rich, powerful person on criminal charges.
Especially a rich white person
A rich, white, pedophile! Arrested. Have they no respect? What will they do next… tax them?
trump/fElon next please
Because the other rich powerful cunts already decided they don’t care about him
As a British person that’s something I thought I’d never see.
Arrested on his birthday too.
Arrested on his birthday too.
Love seeing this creep go down.
As an American citizen I’m wildly jealous.
The evidence is right there and we’re the only ones that don’t seem to give a s***.
The late queen’s protection of him was a blemish on her record. I’m happy the king has cut him loose to face consequences… I wonder if they asked him before the arrest…
They didn’t.
“The Press Association is reporting that neither King Charles nor Buckingham Palace was informed in advance of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest.”
That’s an interesting development then. Nothing stopping the king from issuing a pardon
The charge is sharing goverment documents. The penalty is a fine.
Where are you hearing that? The charge is misconduct in public office, and while the initial arrest for it has been made based on sharing documents, the penalty itself can have a maximum of life in prison. Life in prison won’t happen, but given they’ve now searched 4 properties, I don’t think he’s getting away with just a fine either.
Charles also said something like “the law must take its course” in reaction to the news, so I think he might just let it play out
On June 6, ABC News’ David Muir asked Joe Biden, “Have you ruled out a pardon for your son?” Biden responded, “Yes.”
A week later, Biden reiterated to reporters during an international summit that “I will not pardon him,” nor commute his sentence, a lesser action that would have reduced Hunter Biden’s sentence but not lifted his conviction.
Not saying Charles will do an about face like Biden, nor will I say that he’s not just throwing Andrew under the bus to avoid additional fallout, but let’s see what he does if/when Andrew faces real consequences.
Yeah, sucks that Biden had to do that. But he clearly saw how trump was going to weaponise the doj. They were already reneging on the plea deal that Biden jr had made.
I mean…
I have to assume thr relatively precarious position the royals have is stopping him
It’s the continual back and forth they’ve had for the last several centuries.
They don’t want to lose more power or come off as weak, but they also don’t want to weild too much power and be removed.
Yeah. I think throwing his brother under the bus would probably earn the king a whole lot of goodwill with the public, whereas pardoning him would outrage people.
Though not much came of Jimmy Saville, but Andrew’s not dead
Uh, yeah there is. It needs to be recommended by ministers.
He can’t do that.
No the King has that power. It is exercised today under the guidance of other officials, but the King can still use the power without reccomendation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_of_mercy
It is crazy how much power the UK monarchs still have. They choose not to exercise it often, but the option remains.
The convention is that the royal family don’t use these powers unilaterally. There’s an unspoken agreement here that they get to keep their palaces and fancy lifestyle on the understanding that they keep out of politics and legal issues so while Charlie could in theory do something like this, he also knows that if he did, it would pretty much signal the end of the monarchy in the UK.
Conventions. That’s what kept the US somewhat sane, until it didn’t. How is that going again?
Almost certainly; Andrew lives on Charles’ private estate.
Blame Queen Elizabeth. She was more interested in preserving the monarchy than Andrew’s victims. There has to be a better way to promote tourism.
I’m not British but I’m also very surprised. I can’t help but wonder if they would have dared had he still had his title?
on his birthday too The cops took the phrase “the icing on the cake” literally, and I think it was an excellent choice.
I can’t help but wonder if they would have dared had he still had his title?
I would assume that the king and other interested parties will have known this was coming for a while and that is why he lost his title.
Maybe, I’m not so sure. I had thought they knew it was very likely the accusations were true, but they spent a lot of time sidestepping action. If public criticism hadn’t been so relentless, they might have been content to sweep it under the rug, as is tradition.
But I have never kept close track of the royal family, largely because I always assumed they were untouchable.
they spent a lot of time sidestepping action
That’s sort of my point though, they spent years protecting him and then suddenly a few months ago something made them turn on a dime and strip him of his titles very rapidly. I suspect that “something” was being told the police had enough evidence to arrest him.
Someone asked Ernest Hemingway how he lost all his money.
“Gradually, then all at once.”
Same situation. One person says something and it’s dismissed. Ten people say it and it becomes gossip fodder. A hundred people say it and it becomes an open secret. A million people say it and he gets arrested.
I wonder if the one that defected with his wife to california had something to do with all of this too, and not just snobbery to his new wife.
Charles has always hated and envied Andrew. He removed him from Royal duties as soon as he had the power to do so.
What did he envy him for?
Charles has a complex that his parents never loved him, and merely bred him to be Sovereign. It’s why he still refuses to move in to Buckingham Palace. Andrew was unquestionably Elizabeth’s favourite child, with his frequent failures and bankruptcies excused and waved away.
You do not know these people. This is knitting circle talk. Charles removed Andrew because of Epstein and other local infractions, as well as knowledge of him sharing state secrets.
This is detailed in Tom Bower’s thoroughly researched book.
The law wanted to send a clear message, just 25 years too late.
Got to have a couple of examples of the rich and powerful going away for their crimes so the plebs don’t realise how stacked against them the system really is.
Arrested on his birthday too
surprise muthafucka
HOLY CRAP IT’S REAL.
I didn’t believe it when I first saw it. FUCKING AWESOME.
I don’t get it, what public office does he hold and was he elected?
He was a trade envoy for the uk.
Makes sense in a way, but still weird giving royal families any public office because they are royal.
Think of the royals like vestigial organs - they still exist and do something, but your body won’t really miss them if they’re removed.
US appoints all kinds of people to government senior roles no one would elect.
Republicanists are going to have a field day today.
It does somewhat undermine their claims that the Royals are above the law
Andrew is not a royal. Charles had to remove his title.
I think it helps that his mother, of whom he was the favourite child is dead and can’t protect him anymore.
Charles is. The CPS prosecutes in his name.
None of the others are though.
Hang the childfuckers high! As per law with due process obviously, and yes I know they don’t have the death penalty which I do not support generally because we can’t trust authorities to get the right people let alone to decide who should be executed.
Still though, send this guy to like a penal colony on some island north of scotland or something, building sea bird habitat on bread and water rations.
He been arrested for misconduct whilst in public office, so not for being a nonce. It’s for sharing information.
They can lay additional charges later. This just gets him in the system.
For sharing information about adults fucking children?
No
over the alleged sharing of confidential material by the former prince with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
Really? Not because he’s a sex offender himself maybe? I’m happy to see an arrest, but fucking really!?
Because even in the Epstein files most people aren’t saying “ay Jeff, cheers for the fifteen year-old lasses we all shagged, see you next time,” but they are saying “here are the minutes of the cabinet meeting/this is what the prime minister thinks about regulating your company/this is the most he’s willing to give you a tax break for” in emails because that stuff had to be communicated somehow.
We can all see that Andrew probably committed some sex crimes. But being a suspicious creepy fucker, being accused, and having a photo of you crouching over a girl would not be enough evidence to get you or me charged with a crime either. The counterweight to “nobody is above the law” is “nobody shall be convicted except on the evidence.”
Yes, sadly, this will be about selling state secrets, not pedophilia. Of course, Trump did the same thing out of Maralago.
It’s sad that all too often there is insufficient evidence to charge people with sexual crimes, but he’s being charged with a very serious crime for which there apparently is sufficient evidence. It’s no competition, but betraying your country causes small amounts of harm to millions of people, which is not less important than causing extreme harm to a small number of people.
That was probably the best angle to start an in-depth investigation into his dealings with Epstein. Evidence that comes to light during that investigation can still be used for additional charges.
They got Capone on tax evasion, etc.
Max sentence is life imprisonment, so I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but it would still be nice to call a spade a spade… and other idioms
Might be a matter of what they can prove definitively. Better to hit him with a charge they know will stick than one that he has a chance to wiggle out from.
We can hope Mandelson is next, he shared information with Epstein too if I recall.
They never go down for their worst crimes. Usually they are guilty of horrible things, killing people with greed and knowing lies, but get taken down with sex scandals. So when it’s an actual sex scandal I’m not surprised it’s some other thing.
I think because other connected people don’t want to be implicated, so they make sure the person is convicted on something unrelated and use their influence to keep the charges off the larger issue perhaps. Never more true than with this case, they are all implicated. Who is they? Every swell in the US and UK apparently. Just presume anyone in the US that went to the ivy league and was in a private club hung out with epstein. (Private clubs started after civil rights triumphed, when they had to start taking in deserving poor and minorities, they started the clubs to differentiate between the aristocracy that almost exclusively runs our business and government, and the dirty charity cases.)
Across the pond, whenever they’d get a big Mafia don, usually it wasn’t because of all the bodies in the river wearing concrete shoes. Usually, it was due to unpaid taxes or some white-collar bullshit. I guess they take what they can get?
CPS generally charges what they can reasonably prove.
*and since he’s high profile I expect (hope) they aren’t going to fuck it up. get him for something like this, maybe it opens the doors to further charges. Anyway, living in hope.
Unfortunately, I fear most of the fallout from this will be that we “know” what some people did, but few will actually be held legally responsible. There’s the bar of proof that satisfies the public (the “sniff test?”), and what’s required for a conviction in court. In the end, any punishment is better than none. One up side could be that, because of what the public “knows” happened, those that are punished will hopefully be unlikely to see any lenience in sentencing. Not hopeful after seeing Maxwell’s treatment, but early days.
They probably have to start small, it’s unprecedented territory, and they’d want the proper charges to stick. I expect this also opens up the door to evidence gathering for the bigger charges.
There has been a significant development in that case, so that’s what they’re investigating.
