DOJ told judge emails suggested Maxwell was arranging young women to have sex with Prince Andrew
Ghislaine Maxwell attends VIP Evening of Conversation for Women’s Brain Health Initiative on October 18, 2016 in New York City. (Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — As federal investigators built a case against Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, they discovered emails they believed suggested that she was arranging young women to have sex with then Prince Andrew, according to a new review of documents released earlier this year by the Department of Justice.
A search warrant application signed just days before Maxwell’s 2020 arrest identified at least three instances when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell appeared to discuss arrangements for young women, including ahead of his official state visit to Peru in 2002.
“As for girls well I leave that entirely to you,” said an email believed to have been sent by Mountbatten-Windsor to Maxwell in Feb. 2002, signed “Masses of love A”
In another email identified by the FBI, Mountbatten-Windsor asked Maxwell about helping him find “some new inappropriate friends,” according to the search warrant affidavit.
“I am up here at Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family,” Mountbatten-Windsor wrote in August 2001. “Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”
Months later ahead of his official visit to Peru, Maxwell shared with Mountbatten-Windsor an email in which she asked an acquaintance in Peru to help find him people who are “intelligent pretty fun” and can be “to be friendly and discreet.”
“Some sight seeing some 2 legged sight seeing (read intelligent pretty fun and from good families) and he will be very happy. I know I can rely on you to show him a wonderful time and that you will only introduce him to friends that you can trust and rely on to be friendly and discreet and fun,” Maxwell wrote in March 2002.
“Got it I will ring him today if I can. Love you A,” an email associated with Mountbatten-Windsor responded.
According to a search application released earlier this year by the Department of Justice, the FBI believed those emails showed Andrew and Maxwell “discussing her attempts to arrange for young females to engage in sex acts” with him. The messages were cited as part of an application to get a judge’s permission to search dozens of electronic devices seized from Epstein’s residences.
Neither the palace nor a representative for the former Prince Andrew responded to a request for comment from ABC News.
Mountbatten-Windsor has long denied any wrongdoing, and Maxwell — who was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021 — was never charged with arranging women for Mountbatten-Windsor. As part of that prosecution, investigators unsuccessfully sought to interview Mountbatten-Windsor in 2020.
“To date, Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation,” former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in January 2020.
The disclosure of the new documents come as police in the United Kingdom are renewing their scrutiny of Mountbatten-Windsor. In an interview with ABC News earlier this month, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said his office was seeking unredacted materials related to Epstein from the Department of Justice.
“There’s a whole range of suggested sexual allegations and those are being assessed at the moment to see whether any of them do actually merit a criminal investigation,” Rowley said.
Police in St. Louis County said they are searching for a missing-5-year-old girl. (St. Louis County Police Department)
(AFFTON, Mo.) — A 5-year-old girl is missing after she was left unattended in a running vehicle that was then stolen, authorities in Missouri said Monday.
An Amber Alert has been issued for Aleise Dawson, who was taken around 8 a.m. local time in Affton, Missouri, according to the St. Louis County Police Department.
“The vehicle has been recovered, but the child has not,” the St. Louis County Police Department said.
The child started living with a guardian, who is believed to be a relative, within the past few weeks, according to St. Louis County Police Department spokesperson Vera Clay.
The guardian had placed the child in the car, gone inside a residence to get something and “came back out and the car was gone,” Clay said during a press briefing on Monday.
Officers responded to search for Aleise, and the vehicle was located several blocks away, according to Clay.
It is unclear if the person who took the vehicle is known to the child and guardian, or if this was “completely random,” Clay said. Police are treating it as an abduction, she said.
“There’s a 5-year-old out there and no one knows where she is. So we are going to utilize every resource that we have available to our department,” including helicopter air support, Clay said.
The police department said it does not have a photograph of the child, whom they described as a Black girl standing 2 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 60 pounds. She has four ponytails and was last seen wearing a pink T-shirt with the words “Flower Power” on it and blue shorts, police said.
Anyone with information is urged to call 636-529-8210 or 911.
The Transportation Security Administration building is seen on February 13, 2026, in Springfield, Virginia. The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of a shutdown as lawmakers have been unable to reach an agreement on federal immigration enforcement funding ahead of Saturday. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Transportation Security Administration officers received their first paychecks in more than a month on Monday, TSA workers told ABC News.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA, told ABC News in a statement on Monday that most employees will receive at least two full paychecks for the past two pay periods.
DHS also said there might be slight delays in some receiving their paychecks due to “financial institution processing times or issues with their direct deposit.”
It remains unclear if TSA employees will receive any pay going forward and there have been reports of some not getting paid if they called out.
Payments came after President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Friday asking for DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to work with the Office of Management and Budget to use funds “that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations” to pay the agency’s workforce. The TSA employees will be paid through funds allocated by Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill signed last summer, according to a senior administration official.
TSA employees have been required to work the entire 45 days of the partial shutdown, which began Feb. 14. TSA officers told ABC News that they missed bill payments and got second jobs to pay ends meet. Union representatives described to ABC News stories of officers having to pull their children out of day care and, in some cases, getting eviction notices because they can’t pay their rent.
“It was a partial pay with ample deductions taken out along with taxes,” Yolanda Keaton, a TSA officer at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, told ABC News on Monday. “We did not receive all of our backpay … A lot of officers paychecks are very very short and not everyone received their pay today.”
Addressing reports from some TSA officers about missing portions of their paychecks, Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement to ABC, “We are working aggressively with USDA’s [United States Department of Agriculture] National Finance Center to complete processing for the half paycheck they are owed from pay period 3 as soon as possible.”
According to a government website, the USDA helps to manage payroll for more than 590,000 federal employees.
It is unclear what legal authority Trump issued Friday’s order under, and the White House hasn’t responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
Speaking prior to Trump’s move, Paul Uecker, a TSA officer at Duluth International Airport and Vice President of Greater Minnesota American Federation of Government Employees Local 899, told ABC News about the hardship people at the agency have endured.
“I know of at least one officer at MSP (Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport) who quit because they were having eviction processes started against them,” Uecker said on Friday. “They needed to find a way to get some money so that they could hopefully avoid that.”
Federal employees experienced the longest full shutdown in the nation’s history — 43 days — last fall. TSA officers told ABC News that they had depleted their savings after the last shutdown and were not fully recovered when the partial shutdown began in February.
Senate Democrats vowed to block funding for DHS until reforms are made to Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal law enforcement.
The Senate came to a deal on Friday morning to fund DHS, excluding appropriations for immigration enforcement, but the House Republicans rejected it. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said his party will instead push for a short-term bill to fund the entire department for 60 days.
The House passed the 60-day short-term bill, but the Senate didn’t. Congress is now on a two-week spring recess and will not return for a vote until April 13.
“I feel like they’re playing with our lives,” Oksana Kelly, a TSA officer at Orlando International Airport and mother of two, told ABC News on Thursday. “We all have children. We all have parents that, you know, people [to] take care of. It’s not just some random officers. It’s real people.”
Also speaking before Trump’s memo, Kelly and her husband Deron are both TSA officers who have been working without pay during the shutdown and said they have depleted their savings because of both shutdowns. Deron had to take a second job as a DoorDash driver, according to Kelly.
She was tearful when she described her inability to give their 7-year-old son the birthday party that he wanted at a trampoline park.
“This is probably the hardest thing I have to do,” Oksana Kelly told ABC News as she wiped away tears. “He’s like, ‘Is this something we’re doing?’ And we’re like, ‘Sorry buddy, you know this birthday is going to be at the community park because Mommy and Daddy can’t afford the trampoline park.'”
Trump deployed ICE agents to airports around the country last Monday to assist TSA officers with long lines at security checkpoints. Some officers told ABC News that the ICE personnel were not doing anything to address those lines because they aren’t trained in screening passengers and baggage. TSA officers get about six months of training to do their jobs, according to employees who spoke to ABC News.
“They’re outside the security area, watching as people are coming in, watching as people are coming out. We were told that they were supposed to be there to offer us assistance, and there’s been no assistance,” Maggie Sabatino, a TSA employee at Philadelphia International Airport, told ABC News on Wednesday. “Standing around and just watching, it’s not helping us. It’s putting us on edge, like we’re waiting for something to happen. We’re afraid of something happening.”
TSA saw the highest call-out rates of the shutdown on Thursday with more than 3,450 officers out, according to newly released numbers from TSA. George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston was the worst, with a callout rate of 44.4%. The second worst was Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where Keaton works.
Keaton, who is also a steward for AFGE Local 554, told ABC News last Monday about a colleague of hers who is a single mother.
“She has a child that she has to face every day. It’s hard for her to smile with her child when she doesn’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” Keaton told ABC News. “She doesn’t know if she’s going to keep her apartment because she’s had eviction notices.”
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Luke Barr, Emily Chang, Nicholas Kerr, John Parkinson, Isabella Murray and Jeana Fermi contributed to this report.
A view of Hunter College of The City University of New York, April 10, 2017, in New York. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A New York City college professor has been placed on leave amid backlash over what the school called her “abhorrent remarks” during a public school district meeting.
Hunter College associate professor Allyson Friedman made the remarks during a NYC District 3 Community Education Council (CEC3) meeting earlier this month that she was virtually attending as a parent in the Manhattan district, the university confirmed.
While an unidentified eighth grade student spoke against the potential closing of her school, Friedman can be heard saying in a video of the meeting, “They’re just too dumb to know they’re in a bad school. … Apparently Martin Luther King said it. Like if you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back, you don’t have to tell them anymore.”
Friedman appeared to be referencing remarks made earlier in the meeting by District 3 interim acting superintendent Reginald Higgins, who had quoted the Black scholar Carter G. Woodson: “When you can control a man’s thinking, you do not have to send him to the back door, he will go without being told.”
During Friedman’s remarks, other attendees could be seen reacting in shock and someone interrupts her to say, “What you’re saying is absolutely hearable here, you’ve got to stop.”
riedman has apologized for her remarks, which she said were taken out of context during an accidental unmute and did not truly reflect her own views.
“During a recent online CEC3 meeting, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism to my child by referencing an example of an obviously racist trope,” Friedman said in a statement to ABC News. “Due to an inadvertent unmute, only part of that conversation was captured. My complete comments make clear these abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group. I fully support these courageous students in their efforts to stop school closures. However, I recognize these comments caused harm and pain, while that was not my intent I do truly apologize.”
Hunter College said earlier this week that it is “reviewing the situation under the university’s applicable conduct and nondiscrimination policies.” On Wednesday, Hunter College President Nancy Cantor updated that Friedman, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, has been placed on leave while the school investigates the incident.
“This painful incident unfolded at a meeting where Black History Month was being celebrated and the pernicious and enduring effects of anti-Black systemic racism were being discussed, especially with regard to the role of educational institutions in addressing them,” Cantor said in a statement. “Hunter has long embraced such a role, which requires constant vigilance to remain attentive and responsive to the ways in which we continually draw and redraw discriminatory social lines.”
ABC News has reached out to Friedman for comment on Thursday, following the update from Hunter.
CEC3 has condemned Friedman’s remarks as “racially offensive.”
“Regardless of intent, these comments were deeply harmful and wholly unacceptable,” CEC3 said in a draft statement. “That such remarks were made while a student was courageously offering public comment makes this incident even more troubling.”
New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has also condemned her remarks, saying at an unrelated press briefing on Tuesday, “It was abhorrent to listen to. And our students deserve so much better.”
