We can’t prove Andrew doesn’t sweat: lawyers

Prince Andrew will also offer no witnesses to support alibi that he was in Pizza Express on the night he allegedly had sex with Virginia Giuffre

Prince Andrew can’t provide medical evidence that he doesn’t sweat. Picture: AFP.

The Duke of York cannot support his claim that he has the “inability to sweat”, his lawyers have said, despite it being a defence against claims he had sex with a teenager.

Prince Andrew will also offer no witnesses to support his alibi that he was in Pizza Express in Woking on the night that he was accused of having sex with Virginia Giuffre in 2001 when she was 17.

Giuffre’s attorneys asked the duke to name people he might have met in the restaurant who could back up the alibi he gave during an interview on BBC’s Newsnight in 2019.

She has said that she was introduced to the duke by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and accompanied him to Tramp nightclub. “He was a hideous dancer and he was sweating profusely all over me,” she told NBC. “I just remember like, ugh, I need a shower.”

In the lawsuit she has filed against the duke, she says that she was then forced to have sex with him at Maxwell’s house in Belgravia.

Andrew, who denies the allegations, told Newsnight that her account could not be true “because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time … because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at … It was almost impossible for me to sweat.”

He also said that on the day in question he had taken his daughter Beatrice to a children’s party at Pizza Express in the late afternoon and was at home with his children for the rest of the night.

As part of the discovery process, lawyers for Giuffre asked the duke to name “all persons you met or encountered at a Pizza Express located in Woking, England” and anyone he met at Tramp. They also asked for “all documents concerning your alleged medical condition of anhidrosis, hypohidrosis or your inability to sweat.”

Lawyers for the duke replied “none” when asked for the names of people he had met at the restaurant. They said that the request for evidence of his inability to sweat was “harassing” and sought confidential, private information. They added: “No such documents exist in his possession.” He denies going to Tramp.

Lisa Bloom, a lawyer, says she represents a witness who saw him at the Tramp nightclub with Giuffre.

Giuffre, 38, also says that during a later encounter in New York she was made to sit on Andrew’s knee with another alleged victim, named in previous depositions as Johanna Sjoberg, while “Prince Andrew touched [Giuffre]”. Giuffre has said that Maxwell gave the duke a Spitting Image puppet in his likeness and that “Andrew cupped my breast” with it as she sat on his lap. In a deposition for a previous case Sjoberg said that “they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine”.

Giuffre’s lawyers requested “all gifts” he might have received from Epstein or Maxwell, “including but not limited to puppets”, and any documents about them. His lawyers said that “no such documents exist in his possession”.

Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell inside Maxwell’s London Mews home Picture: Screengrab / Channel 9 / 60 Minutes

Giuffre’s lawyers filed the documents detailing their questions and the duke’s responses after his lawyers filed a motion to halt proceedings in the case pending an investigation of whether Giuffre was a resident of the United States. They said that she was actually a resident of Australia and was thus unable to file a suit against him in a New York federal court.

Giuffre’s lawyers said that they would prove that her home was in Colorado and accused the duke of “a transparent attempt to delay discovery into his own documents and testimony”. They added: “If Prince Andrew truly has no documents concerning … his alleged medical inability to sweat or anything that would support the alibis he gave during his BBC interview, then continuing with discovery will not be burdensome to him at all.”

Yesterday (Friday) Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the duke’s request to temporarily suspend proceedings. He will hold a hearing in the case on Tuesday, at which the duke’s lawyers will seek to have the case dismissed.

The Times