Norway crown princess plays down ties with Jeffrey Epstein: 'Manipulated and deceived'
· Toronto Sun
Once, everyone was friends with pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein . Now, no one wants to know him.
Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit is the latest to go public with a mea culpa about her past friendship with the late financier.
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The royal claimed during a 20-minute interview on Norwegian public radio that she was “manipulated” by the well-connected greaseball. Mette-Marit tried to explain her unusually tight relationship with Epstein.
“Of course I wish I had never met him,” she told public broadcaster NRK. “It is extremely important for me to acknowledge that I did not look into his past more carefully, and also to acknowledge that I was manipulated and deceived to such an extent.”
A commoner, she married Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, and her name appears countless times in Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year.
The files revealed an unexpectedly close friendship between the pair and raised questions in Norway about whether Mette-Marit can become queen, with recent polls showing that a majority of Norwegians oppose the idea.
What she says of Epstein
“It was a friendly relationship: above all, he was a friend to me. But if your question is whether the relationship had another nature, the answer is no,” she said.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and reportedly died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. Mette-Marit has previously said in written statements that she deeply regretted her relationship with the disgraced financier.
But according to email exchanges, the Norwegian and the pedophile were closerthanthis. Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein in 2011 that she had “googled” him, adding “it didn’t look too good” and ending the sentence with a smiley emoji.
Accordingly, the aspiring queen didn’t remember the email.
In 2012, when Epstein told Mette-Marit he was in Paris “on (a) wife hunt,”, she replied that the French capital is “good for adultery” but that “Scandis (are) better wife material.”
The relationship was so tight that in 2013, Mette-Marit and a pal stayed at Epstein’s Palm Beach palace in Florida for four days. And in spite of pleas of innocence, the emails have a warm, intimate tone.
She claimed the emails were about “friendship” and now, she finds them “embarrassing.” Mette-Marit claims she ended the friendship after “several incidents” but did not reveal the details. But her hubby, Prince Haakon, claims she felt a “little unsafe” after one incident.
“I’m not the one to feel sorry for,” the 52-year-old princess said. “It’s all the victims who’ve been subjected to these serious abuses who deserve justice.”
Other woes for the royal
Epstein and his former lover and second banana, disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, recruited and groomed underage girls to be shared for sex with the their like-minded coterie of pedophilic pals. The girls were then shipped around the world for sex.
And it doesn’t appear as though Norwegians are buying the princesses’ babe in the woods narrative.
“She doesn’t concretely answer some of the most difficult questions, the heart of the questions,” Harald Stanghelle, a royal commentator for newspaper of record Aftenposten, told NRK.
And the royal has other woes. In addition to an incurable lung condition, her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, 29, may be headed to jail for a slew of rapes and sexual assaults. He denied the allegations.
His trial ended Thursday and prosecutors are calling for a seven-year, seven-month prison sentence. The verdict is due in June.
— With files from wire services
@HunterTOSun