Dominic Smithers
A deception expert claims that the FBI need to focus on one thing to determine whether Prince Andrew is lying about allegations of sexual abuse made against him.
Virginia Giuffre filed a civil suit against the 61-year-old, alleging that he had sex with her without her consent when she was a teenager.
The suit, which was filed at a court in New York last year, claims the first incident of abuse took place at the London home of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001 when Ms Giuffre was 17 years old.
Two other assaults, Ms Giuffre claims, took place at Epstein’s Manhattan townhome and his Little St James estate in the US Virgin Islands.
Prince Andrew has strenuously denied all allegations made against him, most notably during his now infamous interview with Emily Maitlis back in 2019.
Cliff Lansley is an expert in emotional intelligence and can tell in a few seconds whether someone is telling the truth or not.
As well as advising military and intelligence agencies on how to use his techniques, he offers his expert opinion on the Discovery+ show Faking It, which looks back at interview footage of some of the most famous and infamous names on the planet to spot when they are lying.
And after analysing interview footage and documents relating to Prince Andrew's case, and says there is just one word that detectives should focus on in getting to the truth: sex.
Speaking to LADbible, Mr Lansley said: "We looked at the story Prince Andrew was telling and also the accusations that were levelled against him, and then we look at where are the major inconsistencies.
"And what seems to be the crux of this for the FBI or those investigating it is how they're defining sex.
"So we've got the alleged victim, Ms Giuffre, who's saying that they had sex three times, but when you look at depositions and the paperwork, she never says 'we had sexual intercourse', she says she was told to have sexual intercourse by Epstein.
"But when you look at the content, she evades that accusation, so that kind of suggests that she's being careful not to perjure herself to claim that they had sexual intercourse."
Adding: "I've not interviewed Virginia so you've got to be careful here, but that needs checking - 'Can you describe in detail what you did with Andrew in the three occasions that you said you had sex with him?'"
Mr Lansley says this will allow investigators to determine how Prince Andrew's version of events stack up to Ms Giuffre's.
He says: "In the Cambridge dictionary, the definition of sex is intimate, physical contact, not necessarily involved in sexual intercourse.
"So if she's trying to ham up an encounter, to make it seem more serious than it is, that's a deliberate attempt to mislead. So that fits, that's a lie.
"On the other side, you've got Prince Andrew, saying, 'I didn't have sex', but you remember the famous Clinton line, 'I did not have sexual relations [the way my lawyers define sexual relations] with Monica Lewinsky'.
"So this could be semantic one. How is he defining it? If he's defining sex as sexual intercourse, he could be telling the truth when he says, 'I didn't have sex with Ms Giuffre'."
Adding: "That's what the investigators need to do. Get that one word, a three letter word. I think that's at the nub of where I'd be interested to ask both of those people questions so we get to the truth."