Prince Harry Is Risking ‘Reputational Chaos’

Prince Harry’s ongoing lawsuit against a major tabloid publisher could risk returning him to an era of “reputational chaos” after a judge ordered him to explain how messages with his memoir ghostwriter had been deleted, a new episode of Newsweek’s The Royal Report has heard.

Newsweek’s chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, told listeners that the prince’s legal case against Rupert Murdoch-owned News Group Newspapers (NGN) was at risk of “getting very messy.”Harry was accused of destroying potentially relevant documents and ordered by a judge to provide a written witness statement explaining why memoir drafts and messages with his ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer had been deleted, after a court hearing connected with his unlawful information gathering lawsuit against NGN took place in London last week.

Harry claims NGN employees engaged in illegal activity to source stories about his private life between the 1990s and 2010s that were published in its titles, including The Sun and now-defunct News of the World newspapers.
The publisher previously stated that no illegal activity took place at The Sun and is seeking to have the prince’s claims dismissed for being filed too late. In Britain, a claimant has a six-year period between becoming aware that they may have been the victim of unlawful information gathering and filing a lawsuit for their claim to be valid.

NGN argues that Harry had been aware he could bring allegations to court before 2013, which would dismiss his lawsuit which was filed in 2019.

NGN has submitted a large disclosure request to the court in the hope that they can identify evidence that Harry had been aware of his potential right to file a lawsuit against them through emails, text messages, WhatsApp data and memoir drafts.