He’s the last person the defence would want in any witness box. Comedy gold.
I feel like his privileged life has given him a deluded confidence that he’s bullet proof and that public support would be behind him. He cannot read the room, any room.
Very very true. I suppose the question is whether he learnt any lessons from his TV interview? Or not?
While I think a settlement is the more likely outcome I’m not sure that’s a foregone conclusion.
There’s obviously huge pressure on him to settle in order to protect his mum and also his daughters - there’s talk of Beatrice giving evidence about the trip to the Pizza parlour for instance. Any son/father would surely want to protect his family from all that and that’s before you even start on the institution of the Royal Family.
But remember Epstein and Maxwell also both settled civil claims with Giuffre but still faced criminal charges. In other words I’m not sure a settlement necessarily makes PA’s problems go away, as so many media pundits are saying. They could actually make them worse. He needs to weigh up those risks.
So far as Giuffre is concerned she’s saying she wants justice and her day in court rather than a settlement. That may be true or it may just be a tactic to get PA to increase his offer. But there are pressures on Giuffre to settle as well.
It’s worth remembering that in the US, civil cases are decided before a jury and as we know from the Coulston Four case juries don’t always jump the way people expect. So there are two obvious questions:
1. Is PA as loathed in the US as he is in the U.K.? Or will a jury over there have a more forgiving view than the one expressed on here?
2. How will the jury react if and when they hear evidence from Carolyn Andriano and any other Epstein victims PA’s lawyers can find with a narrative similar to Andriano? Will a jury buy into Giuffre’s narrative that she was coerced? Or will they decide she was another predator and that it would be wrong to reward a predator? Remember Giuffre wasn’t called to give evidence in the Maxwell trial and there would have been a reason for that. I suspect the reason was because the conflict between what Giuffre was saying and what Andriano was saying would have muddied the waters with the jury. Those issues will be front and centre if this case comes to trial.
So those issues, and the questions Giuffre will be presumably be asked as part of discovery, will put pressure on her to settle as well.
So overall I think a settlement is still the most likely outcome but the negotiation may not be as one sided as you might think from media reports.