Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is asking a court to quash search warrants used by Thames Valley Police before his February arrest, putting the legality of searches at Sandringham and Royal Lodge in Windsor back before a judge. The hearing is due on Thursday afternoon and will begin in private.
The challenge matters now because it goes straight to the warrants behind the searches that followed his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Police were seen at Marsh Farm in Sandringham and at Royal Lodge in Windsor for several days after he was taken to Aylsham police station on his 66th birthday and later released under investigation the same day.
The warrants were issued on 18 February by a judge at the Central Criminal Court, and the case is being brought as an application for judicial review against the chief constable of Thames Valley Police and the Central Criminal Court. Thames Valley Police has said it is already engaged in legal proceedings over warrants previously obtained from the court and has declined to comment further while the case is ongoing.
The legal fight is not only about whether the warrants should stand. Even if Mountbatten-Windsor succeeds in having them quashed, that would not automatically require police to hand back material seized during the searches, which is the more difficult question sitting behind Thursday’s hearing. The judge will first hear a police request to keep some documents private, then move to the challenge itself.
Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing linked to his association with Jeffrey Epstein, and the arrest followed information that emerged from the Epstein files in the United States. He has already lost his titles as a prince and Duke of York over those connections, and the court hearing now gives the latest legal dispute around him a sharper edge: not just whether the search powers were valid, but what the police can still keep if they were not.
