EXCLUSIVE: The Gangster Queen! How Elizabeth Executed Shocking Palace Cover-Ups — From Shielding Andrew to Backstabbing Diana and Gagging Meghan

The late Queen Elizabeth II enabled son, Andrew Windsor's deviant and alleged criminal activity with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, with the help of Buckingham Palace operatives who swiftly punished the whistleblowers that threatened to expose his randy behavior, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

For decades, London's Met police officers assigned to Andrew's protection detail knew to keep their mouths shut or face the wrath of the notorious "the Firm" – the nickname for the iron-fisted palace machine of advisors, lawyers and aides tasked with protecting the Crown, sources said.

"It was well known in the police department that if you cared about your future, your career, you never questioned anything about Andrew," said a royal insider. If you did, "you were going to be regulated to a back-street Bobby beat or assigned to a miserable desk job."

"There were protection officers who had really cushy jobs and traveled on private jets with Andrew, and when they raised concerns, they were reassigned."

The stunning palace cover-up comes as a new tranche of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice include "nail-in-the-coffin" pictures of a smirking Andrew on all fours, crouching over an unidentified young female splayed out on the floor.

"Andrew even brought in prostitutes to Buckingham Palace for years," claimed Andrew Lownie, the author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. "It was done on a regular basis. People who worked there complained to people in command – but nothing was done."

Royal experts believe the beloved queen, who died in 2022 at age 96, enabled Andrew, 66, despite pleadings from the future King Charles to banish his brother from the palace forever. Once Charles took the throne, he eventually stripped Andrew of the royal titles of prince and Duke of York and evicted him from his home, the crown-owned Royal Lodge.

As readers know, Elizabeth stripped her son of his palace paycheck and duties following Epstein sex slave Virginia Giuffre suing Andrew for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was 17. Andrew has denied her charges, yet in 2022, the queen helped him pay for the reported $16 million settlement, said the insider.

A second royal source told RadarOnline.com King Charles and his son Prince William wanted to expel Andrew from the royal court years ago, but were handcuffed by the queen and the Firm.

"The queen was always protecting him at all costs, and it was known that he was her favorite child," said the source. "She knew about everything – Epstein, the girls, the trafficking – and I believe she was just trying to help him. She just turned a blind eye to it."

Betraying Diana

Andrew wasn't the only palace cover-up during the queen's reign.

In the days after Princess Diana's death in 1997, Elizabeth watched the country grieve while she herself remained publicly silent. That silence would, according to palace insiders, haunt the monarch for the rest of her life.

Behind closed doors, Elizabeth eventually came to believe she had misjudged [Princess] Diana. A source said the queen later acknowledged that Diana had been treated unfairly during her marriage to Prince Charles and, most painfully, during the divorce that stripped her of her HRH title and palace protection.

"But appearances are everything to the Firm, so the queen never publicly admitted she was wrong about Diana," said the source. "It was a cruel betrayal, because Diana suffered so much. Had the queen embraced her, maybe history would have turned out differently."

Through it all, though, "the queen would always say she did the things she did out of love. No one would dare challenge her. She was the queen, after all."

Silencing Meghan

Duchess Meghan [Markle] publicly – and famously – accused the queen and the royal family of a palace cover-up when Markle started to have suicidal thoughts at the palace. "I just didn't want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening ... [a] constant thought,"

Meghan recalled shortly after she and Prince Harry left the royal family and moved to America. "I went to the institution and I said I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said, 'I've never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere.' And I was told that I couldn't, that it wouldn't be good for the institution."

A response like that doesn't just come from a palace courtier, said an insider, "it comes right from the top. Image is everything to the Firm, and just like with Diana – who also suffered greatly because of the royal family – Meghan's feelings also had to be swept under the rug."

"I went to one of the most senior people to get help," Markle continued. "I share this because there are so many people who are afraid to voice that they need help. And I know personally how hard it is not just to voice it, but when you voice it, to be told no. I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. They said, 'My heart goes out to you because I see how bad it is. But there's nothing we can do to protect you because you're not a paid employee of the institution.' Nothing was ever done."

The Queen Had More Secrets

According to royal biographer Meryle Secrest, Queen Elizabeth II long suspected her younger sister, Princess Margaret, suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome – a condition caused by drinking during pregnancy – and quietly carried that knowledge as a lifelong secret.

At the heart of the tragedy, Secrest suggested, was the Queen Mother's heavy social drinking while pregnant with her second daughter, Margaret.

Fetal alcohol syndrome was not formally identified until 1973, meaning the Queen Mother would not have understood the risk at the time. Yet evidence suggests she abstained from alcohol during her first pregnancy, with Elizabeth, only resuming drinking before Margaret was born four years later.