Prince Harry Faces Major Accusation In Case Against The Sun
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex has been accused of deleting evidence in his High Court case against the press. Despite some small wins in Harry's battle against The Sun newspaper, this accusation may not go well for him. Along with more than 40 other claimants, Harry is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun and News of the World, the latter of which is out of print. Harry is accusing the publisher of using illegal methods to obtain information. Yet, now, the judge claims that Harry may be the one hiding important evidence, and a search of his personal messages is imminent.
The case is set to go to trial in January 2025, and Justice Timothy Fancourt is demanding information from the duke. According to Judge Fancourt, both pertinent documents and text messages between Harry and the ghostwriter of his 2023 memoir, "Spare," JR Moehringer, were deleted between 2021 and 2023. Harry began legal proceedings in 2019, meaning that when these possibly key pieces of evidence were deleted, the suit was already in progress. According to the judge, "the position is not transparently clear about what happened," per BBC. Now, the judge has ordered the examination of nearly two decades worth of Harry's text and WhatsApp messages, as well as searching the duke's laptop. Furthermore, Harry now needs to give a statement explaining why relevant messages have been deleted. Beyond the accusations leveled against him, and the next steps he's required to take, Harry now owes over $160,000 in legal fees.
The deleted text messages may mean bad news for Prince Harry
News Group Newspapers has maintained that Prince Harry shouldn't have a case against them at all. The company insists that they did not, in fact, unlawfully obtain information. They also argue that Harry waited too long as the law states that legal action should be taken within six years of the alleged event. Yet, Harry has persisted, as part of a larger fight for justice against the British media. Beginning in 2019, Harry and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, have filed a whopping ten lawsuits against the press. In February 2024, Harry's case accusing Mirror Group Newspapers of using information gathered via phone-hacking in over 100 news stories was settled.
In the case against News Group Newspapers, however, it seems that Harry's missing messages and documents may really be, as Judge Timothy Fancourt puts it, "cause for concern," per The Telegraph. According to the Associated Press, an attorney for News Group Newspapers, Anthony Hudson, said that when it comes to providing documents that are important to the trial, "we've had to drag those out of the claimant kicking and screaming." He also suggested that Harry "deliberately destroyed" the missing evidence.
Why Prince Harry's correspondence with his ghostwriter is relevant
What is so important about Prince Harry's messages with his "Spare" ghostwriter, JR Moehringer? In the words of Judge Timothy Fancourt (via The Guardian), "It seems to me inherently likely that in the course of discussing at length the material for the duke's autobiography, matters would have been said that related to the parts of 'Spare' in which unlawful information gathering in relation to newspapers is discussed." In a piece for The New Yorker about the "Spare" writing process, Moehringer wrote, "When we weren't Zooming or phoning, we were texting around the clock. In due time, no subject was off the table. I felt honored by his candor, and I could tell that he felt astonished by it."
It's easy to see why Judge Fancourt is seeking an explanation for why this potentially important evidence is missing. The judge has requested knowledge of "what happened to the messages between [Harry] and his ghost writer and whether any attempts were made to retrieve them," per Telegraph. Whether Harry has a logical and legal explanation for the missing text messages is not known at this time.