Prince Harry’s contentious relationship with the rest of the British royal family may come into his lawsuit against News Group Newspapers. The Duke of Sussex accused NGN’s outlet The Sun of using unlawful means to gather information on him, and the case is slated to go to trial in January of 2025, which means the lawyers on both sides are sorting through evidence and preparing their cases. This week, NGN’s lawyers accused Prince Harry of “deliberately” destroying evidence that would have been important to the case – his text messages with the ghost writer of his memoir Spare.
Prince Harry turned over all of his emails, text and transcripts from other means of communication for this trial at the request of NGN’s lawyers. The publisher noted that Harry’s communications with J.R. Moehringer, the author who helped him write Spare, were not included. According to a report by The Associated Press, Prince Harry received a new legal bill on Thursday demanding an explanation for why those conversations were gone. Prince Harry’s attorney Dave Sherborne offered a simple explanation – the prince and Moehringer communicated through an app with a self-deleting function to protect privacy and security.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Prince Harry and Moehringer reportedly texted exclusively through the Signal app – an encrypted app that erases conversations as they Go and is meant to offer as much privacy as possible. Sherborne said that this was perfectly reasonable, and that NGN’s requests for those transcripts were nothing more than a “fishing expedition.” He said that the prince has already gone “above and beyond his obligations” to turn things over to the publisher.
Judge Timothy Fancourt said that “it’s not at all clear” whether Prince Harry deleted those messages or not, but he did find it suspicious. Therefore, he ordered the prince to make a witness statement to explain exactly how those messages – as well as working drafts of his book – went missing. He said in court: “It seems to me inherently likely that matters would have been said which relate to the parts of Spare in which unlawful information gathering is discussed.”
Of course, any conversations between Moehringer and Prince Harry and any drafts of the book could contain more information about Prince Harry’s strained relationship with the royal family, and about his move to the U.S. in 2020. As it is, the published version of Spare divulged a lot of details and made some members of the monarchy uncomfortable. Prince Harry and NGN are due to go to trial in January of 2025.
