Prince Harry could ‘blame’ Royal Family if court rules out phone hacking claims

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Prince Harry could seek to blame the Royal Family if his phone-hacking lawsuits against tabloid editors are thrown out on the grounds that he filed them too late. The prince said his family and royal aides delayed the process.

Newsweek’s chief royal correspondent Jack Royston told a UK morning news program that Harry might seek to blame his family, primarily his father King Charles III and his aides, for causing him to miss the chance to take the tabloids to court.

“It’s his big crusade, his big project. He’s at war with the media,” Royston told Sky News’ Kay Burley on Wednesday morning.

Prince Harry pictured with his brother Prince William on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, London, July 10, 2018. The prince may seek to blame his family if his ongoing lawsuits with British tabloids are dismissed. Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Harry is suing three major media conglomerates in Britain over allegations of unlawful news gathering, such as phone hacking, wiretapping and bugging. These were used by journalists to write articles about his personal life from the 1990s to 2016.

A three-day hearing in his lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), publishers of the Sun and now-defunct News of the World titles, is taking place in London. The publisher said the judge should dismiss Harry’s lawsuit because there is a six-year time limit to file a phone hacking claim. It is now expired.

It’s a similar argument made by lawyers for Associated Newspapers Limited, publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, which Harry is also pursuing. ANL denied the allegations against her, but added that the royal was too late to pursue a claim.

In either case, Harry and his legal team argued that the lawsuits should not be dismissed, but should be given the opportunity to go to court.

His argument for filing his lawsuit after the six-year deadline is that he only recently realized his right to sue. He said efforts were made by his family and their aides to hide information from him regarding the alleged illegal acts.

Should a judge find that Harry was too late to make his claims and that cases were not expected to move forward, it is likely to widen the well-reported rift between the prince and his UK-based family.

“He’s probably going to be tearing his hair out,” Royston said on television. “It’s there in his witness statement that he probably could have started some of these lawsuits a while ago. He will be heartbroken if the court decides he left it too late, and he will blame no doubt his family and the palace.

“He will feel it’s their fault that he missed his opportunity,” Royston said. “So actually if he loses it could also cause more division between him and his family.”

Prince Harry pictured with King Charles III (when he was Prince of Wales) and Prince William in London, February 13, 2014. Harry revealed in a witness statement that his family appeared to be hiding information about the illegal techniques from him used by tabloids. John Stillwell – WPA Pool/Getty Pictures

As part of the ongoing hearings related to the lawsuit against NGN, Harry’s witness statement has been released. In it, he not only details his “very difficult” relationship with the tabloid press, but also makes allegations against his family. These focus on how they handled knowledge of phone hacking and illegal information gathering around them.

Harry said the Royal Family had a “secret agreement” with the publishers not to pursue the claims publicly for fear it would cause negative publicity. He added that he was discouraged from taking the editors to task sooner because it would have a negative impact on his extended family.

“In hindsight, I now understand why the staff at Clarence House were so unhelpful and seemingly blocked our every move,” Harry wrote of a period in 2018 when he sought a public apology from NGN for their actions before his death. marriage to Meghan Markle. .

“As they had a specific long-term strategy to keep the media (including NGN) on their side to help ease the way for my mother-in-law (and my father) to be accepted by the British public as a queen consort ( and king respectively) when the time was right, and anything that might upset the applecart in this regard (including the suggestion of resolving our phone hacking claims) was to be avoided at all costs.”

Harry added that “when I actually filed my piracy claims against MGN and NGN in October 2019, I was summoned to Buckingham Palace and specifically told to drop the legal claims as they had a” effect on the whole family “. It was a direct request (or rather request) from my father, Edward Young and my father’s private secretary, Clive Alderton.”

Hearings into NGN’s request to have Harry’s lawsuit dismissed beyond the expired deadline will end on Thursday. A deferred judgment is expected to be rendered at a later date.

The prince is set to reunite publicly with his family for the first time since the release of his highly critical memoir and Netflix docuseries plans, at his father’s coronation in London on May 6.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek’s royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek’s The Royals Facebook page.

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