Prince Harry
Prince Harry has to explain deleted messages
© imago/FAMOUS
In the trial against British media, Prince Harry must explain the disappearance of messages he exchanged with his ghostwriter.
For several years now, Prince Harry (39) has been waging a bitter battle in court against British tabloid media, which he accuses of, among other things, listening in on telephone conversations and other spying activities. In the current proceedings against the media group News Group Newspapers (NGN), which publishes the tabloid newspaper “The Sun”, among others, he has now found himself in a difficult position to explain himself.
How including the “Daily Mail” and the BBC reportsNGN asked Judge Timothy Fancourt in a preliminary hearing on Thursday (27 June) to order the Duke of Sussex and his legal team to produce a series of documents that could potentially contain evidence relevant to the case. These include messages that Prince Harry exchanged with JR Moehringer (59), the ghostwriter of his autobiography “Spare”.
“Shocking” destruction of potential evidence
According to NGN’s legal counsel, these messages exchanged via the messaging service Signal were deleted before the autobiography was published in 2023. In a statement, according to the Daily Mail, the lawyer was outraged at alleged cover-up maneuvers by the royal opposition. It was “shocking and extraordinary” that the plaintiff “deliberately destroyed” this evidence. It also explains why several Hotmail accounts that Prince Harry used in the past are no longer accessible.
Judge calls for “more comprehensive investigation” into royal text messages
The judge responded to NGN’s request and confirmed that the exchange of messages between the Prince and his ghostwriter could be of interest to the case. “I have seen disturbing evidence,” said Fancourt, “that a large number of potentially relevant documents and confidential messages between the Duke and the ghostwriter of ‘Spare’ were destroyed sometime between 2021 and 2023.”
However, since it is unclear what exactly happened to the allegedly missing messages, the matter must be “clarified by a witness statement from the plaintiff himself.” In addition, the judge ordered a more comprehensive search of Prince Harry’s laptop and his SMS and WhatsApp messages in order to examine his communications between 2005 and 2023.