Good morning, and welcome. Glad you’re here. Of course, I’ve no idea who I’d be writing for if you weren’t, so clearly you’ve made a difference already, and I thank you for that.
Today is Friday, Feb. 20, 2026.
1816: Gioachino Rossini's comic opera Barber of Seville premieres in Rome.
1872: Hydraulic electric elevator patented by Cyrus Baldwin.
1881: Bruckner’s Symphony No 4 premieres.
1919: French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is injured during an assassination attempt.
1933: The U.S. House of Representatives completes congressional action to repeal prohibition.
1938: Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler announces his support for Japan during the Sino-Japanese War.
1944: World War II: The "Big Week" begins with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
1952: The film The African Queen is released in the United States.
1962: John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth aboard Friendship 7.
1974: Steely Dan releases the album Pretzel Logic.
Birthdays today include: Ansel Adams; Alexei Kosygin; Gale Gordon; Gloria Vanderbilt; Robert Altman; Bobby Unser; Larry Hovis; Roger Penske; Barbara Ellis (of The Fleetwoods), Buffy Sainte-Marie; Mitch McConnell; Lew Soloff (trumpeter, Blood Sweat and Tears); Sandy Duncan; Walter Becker (of Steely Dan); newsman Mark Knoller; Patty Hearst; Charles Barkley; and Cindy Crawford.
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I want to address a couple of things I think I didn’t quite make clear in yesterday’s column. It's what I get for trying to cram all those details into one column. It may have been better for me to separate the two issues — Starmer and the former Prince, I mean. It would have saved some confusion. So let's get the scuba gear on, because this will be a deep dive.
Related: Interesting Times in the UK
First, since there are some on social media trying to get some anti-Trump mileage out of this, it should be noted that President Trump was blowing the whistle on the prince back in 2015:
🚨 BREAKING: A video is resurfacing of Donald Trump in 2015 CALLING OUT Prince Andrew — who has now been arrested
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 19, 2026
"That island was a cesspool. No question about it — just ask Prince Andrew. He'll tell you about it!"
Trump was EARLY to blow the whistle!pic.twitter.com/H6cznOg1E7
Secondly, I referred to the disgraced former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, being arrested. I’m sure this will disappoint some, but he was not arrested for his questionable sexual exploits, much as some would desire that outcome. That would have involved questions of jurisdiction and statutes of limitation.
Admittedly, U.S. federal law certainly would apply, since the island is in the (in this case, ironically named) Virgin Islands, a U.S. territory. Federal law in the form of RICO also applies. However, there would at least be extradition issues if we wanted to apply U.S. law, given who Andrew is, to say nothing of the fragility of the evidence, given both the elapsed time since those events and the labyrinth of anything involving Epstein. There's also the issue of the statute of limitations, which is, at the moment,10 years for sex trafficking, for example. I gather there are proposals aiming at eliminating that limit, but they're not in force as of yet. Thus, we're better off letting the Brits handle it.
British authorities arrested Mountbatten-Windsor, and the investigation is mounted, rather, on the suspicion that he passed confidential government documents to Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a UK trade envoy. That confirmation came from a little-noted ABC News report:
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor appeared to share sensitive information stemming from his role as the U.K. trade envoy with Jeffrey Epstein and appeared to discuss potential business dealings with the late sex offender while working for the British government, emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice suggest.
That point is why I made reference yesterday to the former King Edward VIII passing info to the Nazis. The point there was the similarity and seriousness of the offenses of the former prince.
Emails sent by Mountbatten-Windsor show the former prince passing along what he described as "confidential information" stemming from his government role to Epstein. Other emails – including some sent by his former liaison – suggest that Mountbatten-Windsor discussed Epstein's connections in his personal dealings.
The ABC report goes on to detail many times that such info was discussed between the two.
The info under investigation emerged incidentally, from the massive release of Epstein files by the U.S. Justice Department, which is why all this went down only after the release of those files.
The former prince's arrest and the investigation, then, is clearly an internal British matter, and far easier for them to pursue to a successful conclusion. Assuming charges are laid, there would be no extradition required, and what he’s being investigated for carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Although, owing to some complexity of the English legal system, which I'll get to, he's not likely to get an actual life sentence. That said, however, he is 66 years old, so anything over, say, 20 years is effectively a life sentence.
Either way, someone has made the decision to let the Brits handle this one, and that seems wise to me. No matter what happens, Andrew's not getting out of this.
It should be noted that he has not been formally charged as yet. That might seem counterintuitive, but it's mostly the difference between British jurisprudence and American. The phrase used yesterday was that he was “under investigation,” which means, in their system, that he has neither been charged nor exonerated.
By the King's decree, Andrew has been forced out of his Windsor mansion and is now living at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, according to reports I'm seeing in the British domestic press.
My guess at this point is that some serious time will elapse before we see any further info on specific charges, due to the complexity of the case and the desire to get this one right. After all, this is the first arrest of a senior royal in modern British history, the first in some 400 years. My suggestion that the Brits will have an easier time of conviction than we might have stateside doesn't mean it's going to be a slam-dunk by any means. Andy McCarthy at National Review Online addresses this:
Misconduct in office is not an easy crime to prove. The prosecution has to show that a person was a public officer, that he committed misconduct, that this misconduct amounted to an abuse of public trust, and that the matter was sufficiently serious to be deemed a criminal offense. The last two elements, in particular, are subject to a lot of judicial interpretation.
Have no fear of time running out for this to be prosecuted. Andy addresses this as well:
In the United States, and particularly at the federal level, crimes are statutory: Congress creates them and, to nearly all of them, applies a statute of limitations (SOL). There are exceptions, such as murder (no SOL), but most federal felonies must be charged within five years of the conduct alleged or the case will be thrown out as stale on a motion by the defense.
England is a common-law system: serious criminal offenses were defined over centuries of jurisprudence, not by statute. The offense for which Mountbatten-Windsor is apparently under investigation is called misconduct in office. It is a common-law crime that has no SOL. Hence, although the alleged occurrence of the conduct at issue over 15 years ago would make this kind of corruption case impossible to bring in the U.S., it is viable in the U.K.
That's about all I've got on this situation at the moment. I'll mention it if anything pops up. Take care, and I'll see you tomorrow.
Thought of the Day: “Every Friday, I like to high-five ourselves for getting through another week on little more than caffeine, willpower, and inappropriate humour.” — Nanea Hoffman
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