For a while, it seemed like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would smoothly sail through the tumultuous waves of being cut from the Royal family and make it on their own. And they did, at least for a while, even if it came at the cost of further weakening their fraying bond. But the couple must have never anticipated needing King Charles and Prince William to come to their rescue.
Well, it might as well be time for Harry to put that plan of “forcing” a reunion with Kate Middleton into motion because he has landed himself in hot legal waters and those running the show over at Buckingham Palace can make or break the case for him.
It is common knowledge that the Duke of Sussex has been fielding a legal battle, along with many others, against News Group Newspapers (NGN) for phone hacking and unlawful information gathering for years now. Earlier this year, he tasted success when a High Court judge shot down the publisher of the Sun newspaper’s request for a preliminary trial — that would have ended the Royal’s case — to decide whether Harry and 42 others like him were too late in making the allegations.
But now that the case has progressed, Harry is facing dire legal consequences as it has been found that communications via Signal messages between the Duke and his memoir, Spare’s ghostwriters were all “deliberately destroyed” along with all the drafts of his best-selling book. As per NGN’s argument, these drafts and messages — that took place between 2020 and 2023 — would serve as important evidence for their defense as Spare made solid and extensive points that established that Harry was aware or at least suspicious of the unlawful information gathering before 2013.
If this is proved, then the case will have to be dropped as claims in such instances for damages need to be made within six years, while Harry kickstarted his legal battle against NGN in 2019. But apart from the possibility that Harry was too late, he is now a cause of concern for Judge Timothy Fancourt who detailed on June 27, 2024, the “troubling evidence” against the Duke that confirms that the above-mentioned documents and information were “destroyed sometime between 2021 and 2023, well after this claim was under way.”
The “real concern” for the judge is the fact that instead of letting his solicitors do the searching, it was Harry who conducted the hunt all by himself in California and has only disclosed five documents in the court so far (via The Guardian)
“That is rather remarkable and gives me cause for concern about the disclosure exercise.”
The Prince’s lawyers have been ordered to find any relevant online communication between Harry and his ghostwriter, retrieve their presumably deleted conversations on Signal, and scour Harry’s laptop for related documents between 2005 and the end of January 2023.
The bill hit Harry’s wallet and his fate dropped into the hands of Charles and William
By the end of it, the judge hit Harry with a towering bill of £60,000 ($167,000) in legal costs to NGN. But his troubles didn’t end with the hefty bill and the order to find every relevant piece of information that he deleted, destroyed, and the ones that still exist.
The judge has also granted NGN’s other request — of Harry’s lawyer’s reaching out to his former solicitors at the law firm Harbottle & Lewis as well as Sir Clive Alderton, King Charles’ private secretary, and Sir Michael Stevens, the keeper of the privy purse, to seek communication records related to the Prince.
Now, the ball is in Charles and William’s court, two people who have been bearing the brunt of every sensational revelation about the Royals Harry and Meghan Markle have made since leaving the U.K. They are the ones who have been beyond “furious” with the Duke for his actions that now include their Nigeria tour where they acted and got treated like the senior Royals they are not and another future plot to further defy the monarch.
There are three things the palace can do — refuse to share the information, share only the damning details, or provide only the portions that make Harry look good. Based on the trajectory of the burning trainwreck that has been the relationship between Harry, Charles, and William, which option do you think the latter two will pick?
Published: Jun 28, 2024 07:57 am