Prince Harry has been accused of “deliberately destroying” potential evidence in his case against the publisher of The Sun newspaper, and has been ordered to explain himself by a High Court judge.
Judge Fancourt said it was “concerning” that a large number of messages between the Duke and the ghostwriter of his memoirs, Spare, had been deleted “long after” he made phone-hacking complaints against the publisher of the tabloid.
He ordered Harry to write a statement to make it “transparently clear” what had happened.
The Duke and 40 others are suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) alleging phone hacking and other illegal activities, with the trial due to begin in January 2025.
At a preliminary hearing on Thursday, NGN asked the judge to order Harry’s side to hand over a series of documents that could contain evidence relevant to the case.
Among them were messages exchanged between the Duke and JR Moehringer, who ghostwrote Spare, published in January 2023.
Prince Harry (pictured May 2024) has been accused of “deliberately destroying” potential evidence in his case against the publisher of The Sun newspaper.
JR Moehringer secretly wrote Harry’s memoir, Spare, which was published in January 2023.
The American author later revealed in an interview that he and Harry had been “texting all the time” and that “no topic was off the table.”
Judge Fancourt said it was “inherently probable” that “the couple had said things” that could be relevant to the case, which began in 2019. But the messages on the Signal messaging app are said to have been deleted.
The judge said: ‘I have seen worrying evidence that a large number of potentially relevant documents and confidential messages between the Duke and Spare’s ghostwriter were destroyed at some point between 2021 and 2023, long after this claim was underway. The position is not clearly stated as to what happened and needs to be demonstrated by a witness statement from the claimant himself.’
In dramatic earlier exchanges, NGN’s lawyer Anthony Hudson KC said: ‘I’m afraid it’s another example of the obfuscation in relation to the plaintiff’s case. We say it’s shocking and extraordinary that the plaintiff has deliberately destroyed…’
At this point, Judge Fancourt intervened to say: ‘Well, we don’t know what happened. It’s not at all clear.
Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, confirmed that “all chat history has been deleted” but said: “This was a very necessary process, not to hide anything but to remove very sensitive information about (Harry) and the royal family that , if leaked, will not only compromise his safety but also be potentially harmful to (the duke) and his family.
Prince Harry and his lawyer David Sherborne leave the Rolls Building at the Royal Courts of Justice in June 2023
Sherborne dismissed the newspaper’s request as “an old-fashioned fishing expedition” and said there were no documents relating to Spare’s publication. He claimed that even drafts of the book had been destroyed.
But he insisted: “The idea that there is any obstruction or hiding place is just nonsense.”
In his ruling, the judge criticized Harry’s lawyers for the “apparent paucity” of documents they had so far provided to the newspaper to help prepare for the trial, in a legal process known as the disclosure stage.
He revealed that earlier this month it emerged that “there was another large group of documents” provided by the Royal Family to Harry in 2020, which Harry’s lawyers were “completely unaware of”.
Expressing his “concern”, Judge Fancourt said the duke himself, in California, and not a trained lawyer, had been deciding which documents might be relevant to the case.
The judge said he sometimes had the impression that even Harry’s lawyers “do not seem to grapple with” the issue, and “therefore it would not be at all surprising if the (Duke) himself did not fully understand it.”
The paper’s lawyers are also seeking a search for 36,000 emails between Harry and palace staff. Hudson alleged that Harry’s lawyers were “kicking and screaming” instead of handing them over.
Sherborne said three Hotmail accounts that once belonged to Harry had been deactivated and were no longer accessible.
However, he said the duke still had access to email accounts associated with the royal household but they were no longer active.
Sherborne claimed the duke’s lawyers had spent 130 hours, at a cost of £50,000, searching through around 35,000 emails and there was nothing relevant in them. The court was also told there were “two encrypted hard drives” which were said to be “no longer available”. in existence’.
Prince Harry leaves the Royal Courts of Justice in London, March 30, 2023
However, yesterday morning, Harry’s lawyers suddenly announced that they had been “found”, one in the duke’s mansion in California and the other in the offices of his American lawyer.
NGN argued they could contain relevant material, but Sherborne said the files in the drives contained “office documents” from his time as a royal and were unlikely to contain anything relevant to the hacking case.
The judge agreed with that. But he separately ordered a separate search of Harry’s and WhatsApp text messages to detect anything relevant, and said efforts should be made to recover deleted Signal messages with the ghostwriter.
Meanwhile, two of King Charles’s closest collaborators find themselves dragged into the saga. The judge ordered Harry’s lawyers to write to her Majesty’s Private Secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, and Sir Michael Stevens, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, asking them to disclose any correspondence with the duke.
Mr Sherborne said the suggestion that his client “had dragged his feet, had to be dragged kicking and screaming, had created some kind of obstacle course” was a “monstrous characterization”.
Harry had “conducted extensive searches” for possible information, including “a physical search of his home in California.”
The duke also contacted Lord Christopher Geidt, former private secretary to Elizabeth II, Sally Osman, former director of royal communications, Sir David Manning, former UK ambassador to the United States and Nick Loughran, former deputy secretary of communications for the duke, who said they had nothing relevant from that time period.
Prince Harry was ordered to make an interim payment of £60,000 to cover the publisher’s costs.
