Prince Harry was ordered to explain himself after his publisher The sun said King “deliberately destroyed” potential evidence related to his phone-hacking suit against the tabloid, The Telegraph References.
At a hearing yesterday, June 27, a lawyer for News Group Newspapers (owned by Rupert Murdoch) accused Harry of deleting drafts of his memoir, Backup, as well as communications with its ghostwriter, JR Moehringer, that may be relevant to the ongoing lawsuit. NGN was seeking a potential trove of information — including emails and texts, as well as material on two encrypted hard drives — that it said would have been created after a lawsuit was filed against NGN in 2019. (Harry is one of 40 people involved in the case, which is set to officially begin next January).
The judge overseeing the case, Judge Timothy Fancourt, agreed with NGN's lawyer, saying there was “disturbing evidence that a large number of potentially relevant documents and confidential messages between the Duke and the ghostwriter Backup were destroyed sometime between 2021 and 2023, well after the commencement of this claim.”
Fancourt said the Duke of Sussex and his legal team should try to recover the messages between the lawyer and Moehringer. He also said they should contact other royal family officials and ask them to submit any records of communications with Harry.
Harry's lawyer David Sherborne has defended the royal's disclosure practices up until this point, filing court papers accusing NGN of a “transparent old-fashioned fishing mission” (via People). Sherborne said Harry “conducted extensive research, going above and beyond the call of duty”, including cleaning his California home and checking with the Royal Household for potentially relevant documents. Sherborne also noted that several old email addresses used by Harry (including one called “bazasales69@hotmail.com”) were no longer accessible.
“NGN's tactical and sluggish approach to disclosure completely undermines the deliberately sensationalist claim that [the Duke of Sussex] has not properly conducted the disclosure exercise,” Sherborne wrote. “That is untrue.”
However, Judge Fancourt was not swayed, saying the lack of documentation Harry had provided so far was “rather remarkable” and “a cause for concern”.
He added: “It seems to me inherently probable that matters relating to his parts would have been said Backup in which the illegal collection of information is discussed.'
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/prince-harry-deliberately-destroyed-evidence-tabloid-publisher-says-1235049549/
