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.
At the court hearing on June 27, Harry's legal team revealed that while they had been searching through thousands of documents supplied by their client, they could not retrieve his exchanges with Moehringer because they were sent using the Signal messaging app and have since been wiped. They added that the prince did not discuss the case with the author.
This saw the prince's critics and NGN's legal counsel accuse him of deliberately destroying potentially relevant evidence. The move, Royston told listeners, was a setback for Harry when he and wife Meghan Markle have been making positive moves to transform their reputations.
"The whole thing though does look like it's at risk of getting very messy to me and that it's potentially at risk of becoming a kind of reputational chaos of the kind that I had really hoped to see Harry put behind him," he said of the lawsuit disclosure drama.
"I think Harry's allowed himself to be mired in controversy and negativity and negative emotions and that caused him and Meghan a lot of damage earlier in the year," he continued. "And now they've done a really great job of putting a lot of that behind them.
"But these court cases are just this kind of legacy of the era at which they were constantly at war fighting on multiple fronts."
In addition to his unlawful information gathering lawsuit against NGN, Harry is also proceeding with similar claims against Associated Newspapers Limited, which publishes the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
On how this could develop, Royston suggested: "I just think it's probably in Harry's interest to try and get these cases wrapped up and over as soon as possible so he can kind of complete this transition into a more positive way of being."
The trial for Harry's lawsuit against NGN is expected to start in early 2025.
Newsweek approached representatives of Prince Harry via email for comment.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
