After obtaining the conviction for illegal telephone tapping of the tabloid Daily Mirror last December, Prince Harry is currently on trial against another British press title, The Sun. As with The Mirror, the Duke of Sussex criticizes this tabloid for “the illegal collection of information”, in particular via private detectives.
Prince Harry’s complaint against The Sun, filed in 2019, was deemed admissible in July 2023. As the proceedings progress, the judge criticized the complainant for a lack of transparency, according to Sky News. Indeed, messages exchanged between Harry and his ghostwriter John Moehringer on the Signal messaging service, as well as drafts of the prince’s memoirs, “Spare”, have reportedly been deleted. These messages could have a link with the legal proceedings against The Sun and they were deleted after the start of legal proceedings, according to the tabloid.
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The judge handling the case, Timothy Fancourt, said there was “evidence that a large number of potentially relevant documents” and “confidential messages” between Harry and the writer of his memoirs “were destroyed between 2021 and 2023, well after this complaint has been filed.” He therefore demanded that the Duke of Sussex’s lawyers carry out additional searches in the latter’s computer and examine his various emails as well as his written documents, in the period spanning from 2005 to January 2023.
Lawyers for the NGN group, which publishes The Sun, accuse Prince Harry of putting up obstacles to the legal process in this way and also accuse the complainant of having gone “out of his way” to avoid having to disclose thousands of emails from a now closed account. Emails to which Harry gave access, according to the latter’s lawyer.
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Prince Harry’s defence team accused the Sun’s publisher of engaging in “a classic fishing expedition, completely unnecessary and disproportionate”. The lawyer for the son of King Charles III claimed that NGN had “deleted millions of emails” and in doing so “hid incriminating evidence”.
