A stunned Manhattan courtroom fell silent on January 3, 2022, as U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered the unsealing of the 2009 settlement agreement between Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein, revealing Giuffre received $500,000 to drop her Florida lawsuit and agreed not to sue any “potential defendant” connected to him—a clause Prince Andrew’s lawyers later claimed shielded him from her allegations.
The nine-page document, part of Giuffre’s 2015 defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell, ended with Epstein paying Giuffre to dismiss claims he trafficked her as a minor. The key clause stated Giuffre released Epstein and “any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant” from liability related to the allegations. Andrew’s legal team argued in 2021–2022 motions to dismiss Giuffre’s civil suit that he qualified as a “potential defendant,” thus protected.
Judge Preska rejected that interpretation in January 2022, ruling the clause did not clearly encompass Andrew and allowing Giuffre’s case to proceed. The settlement’s release, following years of sealing to protect privacy, intensified scrutiny of Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution deal. Giuffre’s attorney, David Boies, called it “further evidence of how Epstein bought silence.”
The document fueled Andrew’s eventual £12 million settlement with Giuffre in February 2022 (no admission of liability) and his royal exile. Giuffre’s posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl (October 21, 2025) details the agreement’s coercive shadow, amplifying survivor demands for transparency.
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