Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit said Friday she regrets her friendship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The release of millions of Epstein documents by the US Justice Department has shocked the world, revealing the disgraced financier’s ties to prominent people, including the crown princess and Norway’s top politicians, business executives and diplomats.
“I was manipulated and deceived,” Mette-Marit said in a tearful interview with public broadcaster NRK on Friday morning.
“Of course, I wish I had never met him,” she said of Epstein.
The files show repeated communications between Mette-Marit and Epstein, long after he was convicted of soliciting an underage girl in 2008.
The 52-year-old princess, who apologized to King Harald and Queen Sonja in a Feb. 6 statement, has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
While earlier media coverage had suggested that Mette-Marit had ties to Epstein, the new documents show a more extensive relationship, prompting an unusual rebuke from the prime minister and demands that she provide full details.
On Friday, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said it was important that Mette-Marit answered questions about her relationship with Epstein.
“She regretted her contact with him and was genuinely remorseful. She took responsibility for not investigating his background more thoroughly,” he said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
The princess, wife of Crown Prince Haakon, heir to the throne, maintained contact with Epstein from 2011 to 2014 and stayed at his Palm Beach home for four days during a private visit to the US in 2013. Shows files.
Mette-Marit said, “He used the fact that we had a mutual friend and that I’m gullible. I like to believe the best about people. But I also decided to end contact with him.”
“I never saw anything illegal,” he told NRK.
Epstein’s files appeared to contradict a statement she made in 2019, in which she apologized for not investigating his past and said she would never have become involved with him if she had known the severity of the crimes he committed.
