Prince Harry has been accused of ‘deliberately destroying’ potential evidence in his case against the publisher of The Sun newspaper – and ordered by a High Court judge to explain himself.
Mr Justice Fancourt said it was ‘troubling’ that a large number of messages between the Duke and the ghostwriter of his memoir, Spare, had been wiped ‘well after’ he launched phone hacking claims against the publisher of the red-top tabloid.
He ordered Harry to write a statement to make ‘transparently clear’ what had happened.
The Duke and 40 others are suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) alleging phone hacking and other illegal activity, with the trial scheduled to start in January 2025.
In a preliminary hearing on Thursday, NGN asked the judge to order Harry’s side hand over a trove of documents which might contain evidence relevant to the case.
Among them were messages exchanged between the Duke and JR Moehringer who ghost-wrote Spare, published in January 2023.
Prince Harry (pictured in May 2024) has been accused of ‘deliberately destroying’ potential evidence in his case against the publisher of The Sun newspaper
JR Moehringer ghost-wrote Harry’s memoir Spare, which was published in January 2023
The American author later revealed in an interview he and Harry had been ‘texting around the clock’ and that ‘no subject was off the table’.
Mr Justice Fancourt said it was ‘inherently likely’ that ‘matters would have been said’ by the pair that could be relevant to the case, which was launched in 2019. But the messages on the Signal messaging app are said to have been deleted.
The judge said: ‘I have seen troubling evidence that a large number of potentially relevant documents and confidential messages between the duke and the ghost writer of Spare were destroyed some time between 2021 and 2023, well after this claim was under way. The position is not transparently clear about what happened, and needs to be made so by way of a witness statement from the claimant himself.’
In dramatic exchanges earlier, NGN’s barrister Anthony Hudson KC said: ‘It is, I’m afraid, we say, another example of the obfuscation in relation the claimant’s case. We say it’s shocking and extraordinary that the claimant has deliberately destroyed…’
At this point, Mr Justice Fancourt interjected to say: ‘Well we don’t know what has happened. It’s not at all clear.’
Harry’s barrister David Sherborne confirmed the ‘entire chat history was wiped’ but said: ‘This was a highly necessary process, not to hide anything but to delete highly sensitive information about [Harry] and the royal family which, if leaked, would not only compromise his security but also be potentially damaging to the [duke] and his family.’
Prince Harry and his barrister David Sherborne leave the Rolls Building at the Royal Courts of Justice in June 2023
Mr Sherborne dismissed the newspaper’s application as ‘an old-fashioned fishing expedition’ and said there were no documents in existence surrounding the publication of Spare. He said even drafts of the book had been destroyed.
But he insisted: ‘The idea that there is some obstruction or hiding is just a nonsense.’
In his ruling, the judge criticised Harry’s lawyers for the ‘apparent paucity’ of the documents they had so far handed over 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 had emerged ‘there was another large group of documents’ provided by the Royal Household to Harry in 2020, about which Harry’s lawyers ‘were wholly unaware’.
Expressing his ‘concern’, Mr Justice Fancourt said the duke himself, in California, rather than a trained lawyer, had been deciding which documents might be relevant to the case.
The judge said sometimes he had the impression that even Harry’s lawyers ‘don’t seem to grapple with’ the issue, and ‘so it would not be at all surprising if the [duke] himself did not fully understand’.
The newspaper’s lawyers are also seeking a search of 36,000 emails between Harry and palace staff. Mr Hudson alleged Harry’s lawyers were ‘kicking and screaming’ rather than handing them over.
Mr Sherborne said trio of Hotmail accounts once belonging to Harry had been deactivated and were no longer accessible.
He said the duke did, however, still have access to email accounts associated with the royal household but which are no longer active.
Mr Sherborne claimed the duke’s solicitors had spent 130 hours at a cost of £50,000 searching through some 35,000 emails and there was nothing relevant in them The court was also told there were ‘two encrypted hard drives’ which had been said to be ‘no longer in existence’.
Prince Harry leaves the Royal Courts Of Justice in London, on March 30, 2023
However yesterday morning, Harry’s solicitors suddenly announced they had been ‘found’, one in the duke’s California mansion and the other at the offices of his US attorney.
NGN argued they might contain relevant material, but Mr Sherborne said the files on the drives contained ‘office documents’ from his time as a working royal and were unlikely to contain anything relevant to the hacking case.
The judge agreed with that. But separately he ordered a separate search of Harry’s text messages and WhatsApps for anything relevant, and said efforts should be made to retrieve the deleted Signal messages with the ghost writer.
Meanwhile two of King Charles’s closest aides are being dragged into the saga. The judge ordered Harry’s solicitors to write to His 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 set up some kind of obstacle course’ was a ‘monstrous characterisation’.
Harry had ‘conducted extensive searches’ for possible information including ‘undertaking a physical search of his home in California’.
The duke has also contacted Lord Christopher Geidt, Elizabeth II’s former private secretary, Sally Osman, former director of royal communications, Sir David Manning, former UK ambassador to the US and Nick Loughran, the Duke’s former deputy communications secretary, who said they did not hold anything relevant from the time period.
Prince Harry was ordered to make an interim payment of £60,000 towards the publisher’s costs.
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